The Asphalt Jungle is the big daddy of the big caper movie, the inspiration for countless others from Kubrick's The Killing to Melville's Bob le Flambeur (and including three MGM films based on the original W. R. Burnett story). It is a brilliant, chilling thriller in which the anti-heroes are a group of criminals who plan and execute a million-dollar jewel heist. Hal Rosson's cinematography, which hauntingly captures the urban jungle from seedy dive to unattainable penthouse, as well as a central sequence that describes the heist with documentary-like precision, helped earn the film its critical tag: “American neorealism.” A number of fine performances include Sam Jaffe (who won the Venice Film Festival Best Actor award) as Dr. Erwin Riedenschneider, alias Doc, the little German genius who masterminds the robbery and then falls prey to his own gluttony. Sterling Hayden as the small-time hoodlum, and Louis Calhern as a big-time lawyer, also contribute to a disquieting portrait of the new urban citizenry: hoods in three-piece suits who are every bit as greedy, and ultimately as weak, as the western bums who sought the Treasure of the Sierra Madre two years (and a century) earlier. The film is also notable for an early appearance by Marilyn Monroe, already memorable in a small role as Calhern's mistress.