In the first part of this monograph [see excerpt above] we considered the early Huston. In later years his work has become more introspective. He has increasingly focused his attention on a handful of characters in conflict with their environment … small people in a big world….

In [the opening scene of The Asphalt Jungle] the film has captured the impression of the hunted desperation which pervades the underworld mentality, and conveyed a sympathy and comprehension toward certain elementary factors of criminal existence which suggest a point of view as decisive as that of the jungle it invades. The deterministic factors which may have contrived to produce this world are at once irrelevant. The area is shadowy and elusive, governed by animal law and jungle ethics, but at the moment of crisis, the only reality is tangible.

The first section of the film establishes this environment by introducing the...