Meanwhile, publicity pictures of Jack Palance or Van Heflin are vanishingly rare. There were also plenty of pictures of Ann-Margret in her cocktail waitress outfit used for publicity, as well as pics of her nude underneath a fur coat, which has nothing to do with the film at all: Some rather racy promotionals were sent out: It’s not so much that those behind the film didn’t understand what Once a Thief was all about, but that someone, somewhere, decided that this could be a gritty mainstream film, and the focus shifted in a really unappealing way.Īnd, true to form, the publicity for the film promoted the hell out of the sexy times while kind of forgetting about, well, the plot. Instead, it’s a very earnest film, insistent on being downtrodden and bleak, and as such the tone never quite matches the lurid nature of the pulp paperback plot line. Once a Thief, with its oversexed leads, its edgy dialogue about narcotics and “dykes” and pedophiles, and its sharp social commentary really needed to be a camp-fest. He doesn’t quite reach Bosley Crowther levels of indignation over the immorality of crime on the silver screen, but it’s close.

Speaking of critics, fans of vintage New York Times reviews that involve a lot of pearlclutching over crime being portrayed on screen might enjoy the Abe Weiler review for Once a Thief. The heist in Once a Thief is also reminiscent of Rififi and The Asphalt Jungle, as many critics at the time noted. Once a Thief seems to be the American answer to that film’s success, and is probably why much of the film resembles Bob le Flambeur, an obvious influence on Any Number Can Win. Marko, a convicted felon who spent some time in jail prior to becoming an author, wrote mysteries and thrillers under the name John Trinian for many years.Īnother Marko novel called The Big Grab had been made into a French noir in 1963 called Any Number Can Win, also starring Delon, with Jean Gabin as the French version of a bleached-blonde psycho, i.e. Zekial Marko, the author of the novel on which Once a Thief is based, gives a surprising performance as Luke, a druggie beatnik friend of Eddie’s who has been picked up by the cops for the death of a woman living in his apartment. Palance is all shaky-voiced intensity, and though his relationship with Sargatanas is unhealthy in a way that’s very similar to his relationship with a previous platinum blonde psycho in The Big Knife (1955), he approaches the role with a professionalism it almost doesn’t deserve. Van Heflin and Jack Palance give some pretty great turns in Once a Thief, with Heflin giving the film some solid noir cred. Still, the jazzy opening scenes, epic soundtrack courtesy Lalo Schifrin, and the drugged-out bleach-blonde psychopath Sargatanas (a really fantastic John Davis Chandler) are effective, and it’s no wonder more than one person has dubbed this film “beatnik noir.” The dialogue is a little iffy at times, too, especially with the Hollywood hipsters of the opening scenes, whose lines are heavily cribbed from Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and, truth be told, not that far off from the dialogue in Bucket of Blood. Then his wife Kristine (Ann-Margret) has to go to work as a waitress at a bar to make ends meet, and Eddie starts feeling all the testosterone draining out of his body, what with having to rinse off dishes while she’s working and all, so he drags Kristine from her job, essentially sexually assaults her and beats her up in front of all the patrons, then tells Walter he’ll do the big heist after all.Īs late-period noirs go, Once a Thief is not bad, but its insistence on making Eddie’s testosterone-fueled inadequacies the central focus doesn’t really work. Eddie resists at first, but he loses his job when Vido drags him off for questioning.

When the bullet that killed Lisa Wing matches the bullet that shot Vido, he goes after Eddie.īut Eddie is being framed by his brother as incentive to get him back into the game for one last million-dollar heist. Seems Vido knows exactly the kind of car Eddie drives, the kind of coats he wears, and the kind of bullets that come from his gun, because one of those bullets was dug out of his gut a few years prior. Opening with the cold-blooded killing of grocery store owner Lisa Wing (an uncredited actress), we discover her husband (also uncredited) has seen the killer, and his description catches the attention of Inspector Mike Vido (Van Heflin). Ralph Nelson’s jazzy, hard-boiled noir Once a Thief stars Alain Delon as Italian (!) immigrant Eddie Pedak with a criminal past who’s just trying to go straight, but his gangster brother Walter (Jack Palance) keeps dragging him back into the fold.

A thief in the night trailer