18

TUESDAY

Every attentive crime-flick fan figures he’s culled enough tips to pull off a heist, but it wasn’t always that way. The detailed, naturalistic burglary procedural had essentially been banned by Hollywood’s Production Code before John Huston directed 1950’s The Asphalt Jungle, which recounts a Midwestern jewelry-store robbery. Huston made amends for any possible glamorization of criminality with a plot that leads to the robbers’ downfall, as well as a summation in which the local police commissioner extols his men’s efforts to control the predators of urban America’s “jungle.” Yet it was the heist, not the moral, that caught other directors’ attention. Huston’s film has been directly remade three times, and it inspired such subsequent caper movies as Jules Dassin’s Rififi and Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing. Add an early glimpse of erotic icon Marilyn Monroe and it’s clear that The Asphalt Jungle marked the beginning of a new age. The film screens at 7 p.m. at the Library of Congress’ Mary Pickford Theater, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free. (202) 707-5677. (Mark Jenkins)