From the Syndicate to the Classic Heist Picture

The introduction proffers some cultural, political, and historical contexts for the emergence of the three subgenres of gangster noir discussed in the body of the book: the syndicate, rogue cop, and heist pictures. The first part examines the impact of the Kefauver Crime Commission on early ’50s syndicate films such as The Enforcer (1950). The second part introduces the rogue cop figure via a representative transitional film, John Cromwell’s The Racket (1951), and then turns to the ideological contradictions--“good cop/bad cop”--associated with the Dragnet phenomenon, a paradoxical configuration illustrated by Nicholas Ray’s influential rogue cop picture, On Dangerous Ground (1952). Part 3 surveys the history of the heist movie from Raoul Walsh’s High Sierra (1941) to White Heat (1949), detailing how the prototypical heist picture, John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle, not only draws on Walsh’s films as well as Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (1946) and Criss Cross (1949) but also provides the template for later “caper” movies like Odds against Tomorrow (1959).