Once a Thief (1965)

(On Cable TV, March 2021) There’s a hit-and-miss quality to Once a Thief that steadily brings the film close to a good movie, then retreats and repeats. It does set itself an impossible high bar with a very modern-feeling opening sequence blending a great jazz piece with a robbery sequence. It soon settles for a much less flashy drama — the story of an immigrant (none other than Alain Delon!) trying to forget his past criminal life in order to settle down with his son and wife (none other than Ann-Margret!) but keeps getting dragged back into the criminal life. If you’re going to talk about a cast, this film has a pretty good one, with other roles played by Jack Palance and personal favourite Van Heflin. Ann-Margret’s red mane is wasted in the film’s black-and-white cinematography, but she gets quite a showcase for dramatic intensity with wild hair and screaming sequences. While Once a Thief came too late to be considered a classic film noir, it does have the advantage of its late production date: it’s socially conscious to a degree that would have been unusual in the 1940s and 1950s, concerned as it is about the immigrant experience and the way marginalized people are punished beyond fair retribution. The ending is quite harsh even by the standards of the genre, which paradoxically makes Once a Thief age better than its contemporaries.