Once A Thief ( Les Tueurs de San Francisco) (1965) San Francisco Beat/Transitional Noir

This time I'm going to shove you into the gas chamber. (Inspector Mike Vido SFPD)

It takes more than one watch and helps to have quite a few noir under your belt.

Once A Thief is familiar and yet a bit different. Think of the Classic Film Noir Crime Wave (1953). In Crime Wave Gene Nelson plays an ex con trying to go straight. He's on parole works as an airplane mechanic, has a loving wife Phyllis Kirk,  and drives a hot rod-ed out 1930 Ford Model A.

Some barbed wire hotel buddies of his break out of the slammer and go on a crime spree through California heading South. The gang of crooks is led by suave Ted de Corsia, and they persuade Nelson to help them out by holding his wife hostage while he drive both their bank robbery getaway car but also by flying a getaway plane across the border to Mexico. The cop chasing all of this down is played by Sterling Hayden.

In Once A Thief the excon is  Alain Delon he been out on parole six years after doing a 18 month stretch in San Quentin, he has a loving wife Ann-Margret and a baby girl. He had a good job for an import company but got fired after getting framed for a Chinatown deli robbery and murder. One of the two thieves wore his trademark sheepskin coat and drove a vintage 1931 Ford Model A. The frame up was done by two associates of his gangster brother Jack Palance, John Davis Chandler and Tony Musante. The reason is because they want to use Delon as the inside man to rob the import company of a million dollars worth of platinum wire. Van Hefiln is the cop with a grudge against Delon. He believes it was Delon who shot him during a robbery before he got pinched for the crime that sent him to prison. Familiar and yet a bit different. Its a Transitional Noir.

It got a crisp aesthetic that fits in style/composition-wise with Kiss Me Deadly, Death In Small Doses, The Harder They Fall, A Hat full Of Rain, My Gun Is Quick, Plunder Road, Odds Against Tomorrow, Screaming Mimi, Sweet Smell Of Success, Murder by Contract, The Beat Generation, The Crimson Kimono, Blast Of Silence, The Young Savages, Night Tide, Something Wild, All Fall Down, Cape Fear, Experiment In Terror, The Manchurian Candidate,  Underworld U.S.A., Requiem For A Heavyweight, The Pawnbroker, and its also reminiscent of the jazz club opening of  I Want To Live.  What your are seeing with the above and particularly with Once A Thief, is a Panavision "wide screen" Noir. The blacks are inky and not crushed. Claustrophobia is replaced by agoraphobia. The old Academy Ratios (1.37:1) last hurrah is soon going to be in grind-house Exploitation Films and Porno Loops.

Directed by Ralph Nelson (Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), Charly (1968), Soldier Blue (1970)) written by Zekial Marko, based on his novel. Cinematography was by Classic Film Noir Vet Robert Burks (Beyond the Forest (1949), The Enforcer (1951), Strangers on a Train (1951), Tomorrow Is Another Day (1951), Rear Window (1954), The Wrong Man (1956), Vertigo (1958)) and Music by Lalo Schifrin who wrote the memorable themes to TV's Mission: Impossible (1966), Mannix (1967), Cool Hand Luke (1967), and Bullitt (1968), the theme's to all the Dirty Harry films, and Coogan's Bluff (1968)) .

The film stars French Noir Vet Alain Delon (Purple Noon (1960), Le Samouraï (1967), Le Cercle Rouge (1970), Un Flic (1972)), Ann-Margret (Viva Las Vegas (1964), Kitten with a Whip (1964), Murderers' Row (1966), Carnal Knowledge (1971), 52 Pick-Up (1986)). Four Classic Film Noir Veterans, Van Heflin, Jack Palance and Jeff Corey with four noir a piece and Steve Mitchell with three. Rounding out the cast are John Davis Chandler (The Young Savages (1961), Capone (1975)), Tony Musante (The Incident (1967), The Detective (1968), The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)), Yuki Shimoda (Man-Trap (1961). and Noir TV Johnny Midnight 1960) and Tammy Locke (The Naked Kiss (1964)).

Story

The opening credits take us into a dark North Beach section of San Francisco, la fin de l'ère Beatnik nightclub/cafe.

Russell Lee

It's Big Al's soon to be one of the first topless bars in San Francisco and the United States It was also the first bottomless bar in San Francisco. It still there BTW. It is next to the Condor Club, it's now one of the largest adult stores in San Francisco.

Time wise, we are  right at the dawning of the Age Of Aquarius. But it still leans more 50s than 60s. There is a kick ass drum solo. a hop head jungle beat that punctuates it's pauses variously with beat/hipster jive...

Brunette

Brunette: There aren't many real people left. The only real people I know are dead, pushed into nut houses, lobotomies, junk, suicides or really cooling it and saying nothing to nobody.

Pusher

And also a seedy looking drug pusher giving his spiel.

Pusher: I got a great deal, amphetamines, caps, crystals, anything you want. No? [he's ignored] Keep your trip you don't need nothing, I'll see you later.

He's offering his wares to a man who was, just before the pusher arrives loading a revolver. He's sitting next to another man with a sheepskin coat. Another pause shows two women and a man giving each other the eye before the blond tells her male companion....

"Don't look at me like that"

Blonde: Don't look at me like that. I can read your head. Dolly and Patty have nothing to do with thee and me. [takes a drag on her cigarette]
Man: I don't want to hear anymore about them dykes, man, and if you don't cool this lickety split talk talk jazz you're going to get my paranoid going too you dig?

There's a lot of subtext (both visual and audio) going on in that conversation sequence.

The sequence at Big Als ends with the two gunmen leaving in a 1930 Ford Model A. The Drum solo continues. We segue into a hallucinogenic teeter totter swing through Chinatown to Wings Market. The two rob a woman at gunpoint emptying out the till before shooting her down.

One of the homicide detectives, Inspector Mike Vido SFPD (Van Heflin), upon hearing the description of one of the killers and the unusual getaway car pins an old nemesis Eddie Pedak as the perp. Lt. Kebner SFPD (Jeff Corey) instructs Vido to hold his horses. Here, we get the complaints about police brutality connected with Vido as the reason. It will be echoed again in Dirty Harry (1971). We never heard the term in 40s-50s Classic Noir.

Van Heflin as Inspector Mike Vido and Steve Mitchell as partner Frank Kane

Vido's got a hardon for Eddie. He got drilled in the gut responding to an armed robbery. His vendetta is against Eddie Pedak who he thinks was the trigger-man ever since. Eddie's been keeping his nose clean. Working an honest job and trying to save extra cash to buy a boat to start his own business.

Rt to lt., Ann-Margaret, Tammy Locke, and Alain Delon 

Jack Palance

Eddie's brother Walter a local mobster pays a visit with his two goons the strung out druggie Sargatanas and 'Cleve' Shoenstein offering Eddie $50,000 to pull a job. Eddie turns him down.

John Davis Chandler

However the frame botches Eddie's steady employment. Kristine goes to work as a waitress to make ends meet, but she doesn't tell Eddie that she's a cocktail waitress at Big Al's. When Eddie finds out he goes ballistic. He grabs her out of Al's and tells Walter that he will do the job.

Eddie plans out the heist with his inside knowledge of his former employer. The heist goes well until it goes Noirsville.

Noirsville

Jeff Corey

Jack Palance and Tony Musante

"This time I'm going to shove you into the gas chamber."

Yuki Shimoda, lt

Tail fins

Like I mentioned earlier, the story is a sort of variation of Crime Wave and probably, I'm sure, a few other Noir also. All the performances are good, Van Heflin is looking his age and a bit tired but it goes with the character's story line, John Davis Chandler is creepy as the shade wearing druggie, but no one really stands out from the pack. Anne Margaret jettisons her sex kitten shtick, Jack Palance is believable as the Croatian/Italian big brother hailing originally from Trieste, his Italian sounds great.

Van Helfin BTW is also supposedly from Trieste in the story and definitely has an Italian mother, though he has no accent. This sort of mirrors my own Italian/Croatian background. My father was an Italian from Croatia my mother was from New York City and I have no accent either. So a believable scenario would go like this. Mike Vido was born in Trieste to an Italian mother and say a U.S. GI of Italian decent from San Francisco and arrived in San Francisco at an early age. He wouldn't have an accent.

Alain Delon though definitely sounds French not Italian. I suppose to untrained ears he just sounds foreign. It a minor quibble. There are some great sequences of early sixties San Francisco too boot. 7/10