Search - The Thief on DVD

Content Advisory: Questionable for Children Movie Release: 1952 DVD Release: 02/19/2002 Format: DVD - Black and White Audio Tracks: English SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 26 mins Studio: Image Entertainment Members Wishing: 3 Genres: Thriller, Film Noir, Crime Thriller

For his directorial debut, Ray Milland went out on a creative limb, resulting in the first American film since Chaplin's City Lights without any spoken dialogue. The Thief stars Milland as Allan Fields, a nuclear physicist who has sold out to a foreign power. With only a few tinges of conscience, Fields sets about to steal vital scientific secrets and smuggle them out of the country. With the FBI on his trail, he briefly hides out in a rundown tenement house, where he inaugurates a desultory romance with a sluttish woman (Rita Gam, making her auspicious film debut). On the verge of escaping without detection, Fields is forced to commit a murder and things quickly go downhill from there. The novelty of silence (except for natural sound effects) is intriguing at first, though it wears off rather quickly; still, Ray Milland deserves at least a gold star for trying. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ray Milland - Allan Fields
Rita Gam - The Girl
Martin Gabel - Mr. Bleek
Harry Bronson - Harris
John McKutcheon - Dr. Linstrum
Rex O'Malley - Beal

The picture quality on this DVD is so sharp, so rich, and so beautifully defined, that it's of demonstration quality -- what makes that even more startling is that The Thief is a release from the Wade Williams Collection, which, while it often has very good materials, seldom is capable of matching the preservation standards of, say, Warner Bros. or MGM/UA on their best-preserved films. Here they've done it, and the result is a treat for the eyes, and as fine a looking DVD as this reviewer has ever seen. All of that is important, because The Thief is, essentially, a silent film -- well, not exactly; more properly, it's a sound film missing the one key ingredient that has been a part of virtually every feature film since 1929: dialogue. The viewer will hear every sound that they can hear in any other movie, except the human voice speaking. It's strange how quickly one gets used to this, incidentally -- after the first five minutes, it no longer seems so artificial, and after 20 minutes dialogue seems totally unnecessary. But without voices, any presentation of the movie has to work on all of the cylinders that it has, because it's missing that one key story-telling device. Even better, the soundtrack, including Herschel Burke Gilbert's Oscar-nominated score, is mastered cleanly, crisply, and at a better than decent volume -- the scene 20 minutes in when the compromised scientist (Ray Milland) begins to feel squeezed, the piano that joins the orchestra sounds close and loud; the fugue-like passage on the strings and horns, later joined by the brass, that comes in 48 minutes into the picture, as Milland's character leaves Washington, come off like a chamber orchestra CD playing on your sound system; ringing phones pierce the night and the silence; and every click of a lock or turn of a doorknob is presented loud and clear. This presentation looks and sounds a lot better than The Thief did in a showing at New York's Film Forum some six years or so ago, and it's well worth the $24.95 list prince to own it. The 10 chapter markers are adequate, and there are no special features -- the movie starts automatically, and the menu must be accessed manually. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide