The Burglar is the debut feature of Paul Wendkos (auteur of the Gidget films and myriad television dramas). The film, which begins with a newsreel sequence, reminds us of a kind of down-market version of Citizen Kane. The monochrome cinematography by the relatively unknown Don Malkames recalls Welles’ “b” movie expressionism, a kind of moderne version of the German style. The Burglar adopts the nocturnal lighting motifs of various locales (the amusement park, the stadium) to dissolve narrative in a tawdry fantasmagoria of light in ways that recall The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil. The central plot revolves around the theft of a jewel necklace from a charismatic spiritualist huckster, “Sister Sarah” (loosely modeled after Aimee Semple McPherson). The necklace soon takes on a life of its own, like a dime-store version of Madame de... The acting deserves comment. The ensemble ranges radically in style and capability. Each actor seems to be in a different movie – sometimes a theatrical set piece, sometimes a Hollywood “b” film, and so on. The characters portray such eccentric types that the cast seems drawn from a Max Beckmann painting and the enclosure of the hideout becomes an almost musical study in dissonance. Trapped together in the plot, tortured by the unintended consequences of their actions and subsequent intimacy, the characters begin to experience one another as a kind of Sartrean hell. In the midst of their hideout, the annoying, infantile Mansfield becomes a dangerously destabilizing Lolita. This print represents the integral version of this feature, and is a recent product of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s comprehensive program to restore and preserve its motion picture library. The picture restoration under the supervision of Grover Crisp, was performed at Cinetech (Valencia) and the sound restoration was executed by Chace Productions (Burbank).

Roger S. Harlow