Ray Milland as THE THIEF (1952)

Here's one for fellow classic film fans.

 About 10 years ago, I was visiting relatives in California for a spell. They went out for some Saturday night entertainment. I stayed in and searched YouTube for an old movie. I found one from 1952. A black and white crime thriller that ran only 90s minutes. It starred Ray Milland. Milland was a leading man and top star at Paramount in the 1930s and 40s. In the mid 40s, he won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of an alcoholic writer in THE LOST WEEKEND directed by Billy Wilder. He was the lead actor in the first film Wilder directed, a 1942 Paramount screwball romantic comedy called THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR co-starring Ginger Rogers. Milland's 1952 feature is a United Artists release with an original angle that hooked and surprised me. I watched it again this week and I still like it. The movie is called THE THIEF. It's a no frills spy thriller. It has tension, suspense, some action, a sexy babe -- and not a single word of dialogue is uttered by any actor in the movie.

The story opens at night with a man in his apartment lying on his bed and he's fully clothed. He seems anxious. The phone rings. He gets up and goes to a mirror. We see a wall plaque honoring a Dr. Allan Fields for his work in nuclear physics. The man goes outside. On the sidewalk is another man.  He's in the shadows and walks. As he walks, he drops something. Milland's character picks it up, heads back to his room and reads the small piece of paper that was dropped. Then he burns it. In daylight hours, we see him head into the United States Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C. In an office, he wears a white lab coat and pulls out a tiny spy-like camera. He photographs documents marked "Secret." He leaves the office and we see a name on the door. He is Dr. Allan Fields. His full-time job is working at the Atomic Energy Commission.

His part-time job is betraying his country and passing secret information to shadowy characters.        

These transactions occur in D.C. and in New York City. In libraries, phone booths and even in Macy's. One of those criminal contacts will take the secret information with him on a flight to Cairo. Eventually, the FBI will catch on to this clandestine operation. THE THIEF a pretty good little thriller with that unexpected angle  of no dialogue. Milland is very good as the middle-aged American traitor. Why the physicist does it, we don't know.  We just accept the fact that some dark force got to him. Here's a clip with Dr. Fields feeling that he's being followed while also being overcome with guilt and self-loathing.

THE THIEF was co-written and directed by Russell Rouse. He's the same man who wrote and directed a 1966 film I included in my "Oscar Party Movie Tips" post a few days ago. He gave us that all-star Hollywood clunker called THE OSCAR  -- which I described as being "brilliantly bad" with fabulous costumes by Edith Head. Check out that post of mine and read all about it.