New Print!

A new print of another Columbia classic, fresh out of the Sony lab! Film noir's favorite cad Dan Duryea sleazes up the streets of Philadelphia with the aid of his buxom half–sister Jayne Mansfield in this flashy, highly ostentatious adaptation of a David Goodis (Shoot the Piano Player) novel, screenplay written by Goodis himself and directed by Paul Wendkos in a flurry of tense close–ups and startling cuts. Mansfield (in her first "serious" role) helps Duryea and his gang steal a diamond necklace from a wealthy spiritualist's mansion, but things go awry when a crooked cop muscles in on the action. On The Burglar's release Variety could only remark, "What this film's got is what Jayne Mansfield's got for ballyhoo!" But in retrospect its self–consciously modernist aesthetics, all baroque visuals and plot–interrupting soliloquys about each character's fate (a Goodis specialty), mark it as one of the oddest, most intriguing of all the late noirs.