The Thief (1952 film)

Plot

Ray Milland plays Dr. Allan Fields, a nuclear physicist who works for the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C.. But Fields is also a spy working for an unnamed foreign power.

Through an elaborate series of plans and devices ("tradecraft"), Fields, as ordered by his "case officer", takes sets of photos of top-secret documents, using a Minox camera, and passes these through a vast network of foreign-power "couriers" to New York City, and thereafter overseas to an enemy country (implied by the final courier's plane's destination of "Cairo", certainly a thinly-veiled reference to "the East", without actually naming the Soviet Union). The latest canister of microfilm which Fields sends out is intercepted by authorities after a courier is killed in a freak traffic accident in Manhattan, with the undeveloped microfilm canister in his hand. The FBI develops the microfilm, analyzes its contents and constructs a list of probable suspects within the AEC, one of whom is the "custodian" of the subject document, and who is taken away (which Fields observes) to be interrogated at FBI headquarters.

The custodian having apparently been cleared of espionage charges, the custodian's subordinates, including Fields and his immediate AEC colleagues, have all come under suspicion by the FBI, and agents are assigned to "tail" each one, but it quickly becomes apparent that Fields is the "prime suspect". Fields' case officer becomes aware of this, too, and sends him a "flash message", in a Western Union telegram, to destroy all his "spy-craft" apparatus and to leave immediately for a "safe house" in New York City.

Now scared and paranoid, Fields stays overnight in the safe house, a cheap hotel, waiting for a "signal" (as usual, throughout this film, three rings on the phone, a hang-up, followed immediately by three rings, followed by another hang-up) from his case officer on the hotel's hall phone.

After Fields has been so signaled by his case officer, his trail eventually leads to the Empire State Building. While at the 86th-floor observation deck, Fields meets his contact, Miss Philips. The alert FBI agent spots Fields and pursues Fields who climbs even higher, reaching the 102nd-floor observation deck, and, finally, the spire—where, perhaps as an homage, King Kong had famously met his doom several decades before—Fields fights off the agent, causing the agent to plummet to his death. Fields exits the building with money and false identity documents, his "escape", which will get him out of the country, incredibly also to "Cairo", but he has been shaken by the sight of the dead agent, and feels remorse.

Fields finally breaks down after realizing what he has done, destroys his escape, and surrenders to the FBI the next day.

Cast

Critical response

When the film was released, A. W. Weiler, the film critic at The New York Times gave the film a good review, writing, "Clarence Greene and Russell Rouse, an enterprising pair of film artisans, are trying to prove that some movie yarns are better seen than heard. Their effort is a successful tour de force. For, generally speaking, theirs is a spy melodrama in which language would appear to be redundant ... aside from its novelty, The thief has its fair share of attributes. The fine photography of cinematographer Sam Leavitt, whose cameras have captured the lights of actual, and familiar, locations in Washington and New York, contributes strongly to the tensions of the hunt. The musical score by Herschel Gilbert is insidiously suggestive in creating atmosphere as well as indicating the emotions of the principals. And, above all, Russell Rouse, who also directed, has gotten a sensitive and towering performance from Ray Milland in the title role."

The staff at Variety magazine reviewed the film positively. They wrote, "This has an offbeat approach to film story-telling (a complete absence of dialog), a good spy plot and a strong performance by Ray Milland. The film is not soundless. The busy hum of a city is a cacophonous note, a strident-sounding telephone bell plays an important part and, overall, there’s the topnotch musical score by Herschel Burke Gilbert, sometimes used almost too insistently to build a melodramatic mood and in other spots softly emphasizing and making clear the dumb action of the players."

More recently, film critic Dennis Schwartz gave the film a mixed review. He wrote, "Russell Rouse (The Oscar) directs and co-writes this unique but tedious spy/Red Scare thriller set in New York City ... What we get is a tense mood piece through the excellent dark visuals delivered by cinematographer Sam Leavitt. It shows a lonely and alienated unsympathetic man on-the-run, who is trapped in a shadowy world of chaos but is not fleshed out in his character so we never become concerned with his plight as a human interest story."