Vintage Pulp

January 25 2026

LOLLO’S LAW

Who makes the rules? Whoever destroys the old ones.

This beautiful poster features Italian icon Gina Lollobrigida and was executed by Yves Thos, who painted memorable promos for La dolce vita, Spartacus, and Goldfinger. He also painted magazine covers, book jackets, and advertising imagery. This poster and the one below, also by Thos, are in French, but La loi was made in Italy and known there as La loi. Interestingly, the mostly Italian cast perform their dialogue in French. We haven’t found the reasons for that yet, but the movie’s production info lists both French and Italian backers, so maybe in a violent cage match to decide filming language the French won. Anyway, La loi premiered in France today in 1959.

Working from a prize-winning source novel by Roger Villand, La loi gives us Gina Lollobrigida as a beautiful woman in an Italian fishing village called Porto Manacore, a place dominated by smalltime crook Yves Montand. When agronomist Marcello Mastroianni arrives as part of a project to create more farmland, he’s caught up in a psychosexual drama that centers on Lollo, who he can only scarcely understand. We can sympathize. Her character is another of those devilish wild child types you see in Italian cinema, traipsing and skittering about like something feral. You can’t control her. You can’t even hope to contain her. She’s a dangerous, thieving, amoral minx, but one with—possibly—a good heart underneath.

At one point some villagers ponder whether Lollobrigida will fall into the bed of handsome young outsider Mastroianni, or Montand. They’re answered by one man who shrugs and says, “I believe in tradition,” by which he means “the old, powerful guy.” That moment captures the question at the center of La legge: Do old rules still govern the new Italy? Lollobrigida personifies Italian riches, ultimately ripe for the taking. Meanwhile there’s a discussion of who rules Porto Manacore, and by allegory, what type of person rules the country. The question is symbolized by a nightly drinking game—la loi—in which one man in the local bar is chosen as the law and others must submit to his humiliations.

La loi is stagy and dated, but it looks nice, with exteriors shot in the towns of Carpino and Foggia. There’s also interesting visual commentary, such as during a crane shot down the front of an apartment house revealing to viewers the state of each domicile within, and when Lollobrigida is whipped while her head rests on a bowl of chile peppers, forming a sort of halo. This is all thanks to director Jules Dassin, who had helmed noirs such as Night and the City, Thieves’ Highway, and Brute Force, but had been blacklisted in Hollywood by the HUAC repression squad. Dassin continued his career in Europe, with La legge being one of the results. Generally well regarded today, we think there’s only one word for it: Lollotastic.

Vintage Pulp

October 10 2025

HIGHWAY ROBBERY

Life in the fast lane surely make you lose your mind.

This poster and the one at bottom were made for the Jules Dassin directed crime drama Thieves’ Highway, starring Richard Conte, Lee J. Cobb, and Valentina Cortese. It had a special premiere in Los Angeles in September 1949, and went into nationwide release today the same year. It was based on the unpublished novel The Red of My Blood by A. I. Bezzerides, who saw the book optioned by Twentieth Century Fox and was asked to instead make a screenplay of it. Bezzerides also wrote the screenplays for Kiss Me Deadly, On Dangerous Ground, and They Drive by Night. The last of those was based on his (published this time) novel of the same name, a tale with a similar setting as Thieves’ Highway.

What is that setting? Thieves’ Highway explores the world of trucking and goods transport. In the story, Conte returns from working at sea to find that his father has lost his legs in a truck accident arranged by crooked San Francisco produce marketer Cobb in order to steal a payment. Conte decides that wrongs must be righted, and sets up an apple hauling deal meant to get him close to Cobb. He goes through hell to get that fruit to market, and once he arrives, well, balancing the cosmic scales in vintage dramas doesn’t usually work out as cleanly as its planners hope.

Conte is morally disadvantaged from the beginning. He has senses of honor and fair play, which don’t bode well for him in the cutthroat realm into which he’s descended. Because he’s an everyman, at its core Thieves’ Highway is more than a crime drama—it’s a broad but subtle capitalism critique. Its subtext suggests that hypercompetitiveness ultimately ends badly for everyone involved. When the rules are made by predators at the top, most people are simply consumed, while the closer others get to a seat at the banquet table the more of their humanity they lose.

Thieves’ Highway covers other themes too. Valentina Cortese embodies the fallen woman archetype. With her meager circumstances and Milanese accent, her character hints at the struggles of immigrants in new lands, and of impoverished women everywhere. She’s reduced to hustling men and doing paid favors for Cobb. In fact, it’s a favor for Cobb that brings her into contact with Conte. He’s just another mark to her at first, if one with a cute cleft chin, but when the two throw together she learns that life need not be lived transactionally. With its interesting similarities to Le salaire de la peur, On the Waterfront, and They Drive By Night, and anchored by a frankly brilliant Cortese, Thieves’ Highway is worth a careful watch and a post-screening think.

San Francisco, Twentieth Century Fox, Thieves' Highway, Kiss Me Deadly, On Dangerous Ground, They Drive by Night, Le salaire de la peur, On the Waterfront, Richard Conte, Valentina Cortesa, Valentina Cortese, Lee J. Cobb, Barbara Lawrence, Jules Dassin, A. I. Bezzerides, poster art, cinema, movie review

Vintage Pulp

May 13 2011

CROWN JULES

There are eight million stories in The Naked City.

Above: a great French poster for Jules Dassin’s film noir La cité sans voiles, which was originally produced in the U.S. and called The Naked City. Dassin, who apprenticed under Alfred Hitchcock, was one of the quintessential noir directors, also helming 1947’s Brute Force, 1949’s Thieves’ Highway, and 1950’s spectacular Night and the City. His career in the U.S. was ruined when he was named during the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s, forcing him to live the rest of his life in more tolerant France. It was there that he made the 1955 heist thriller Du rififi chez les hommes, aka Rififi, possibly his best—and best remembered—work.

The Naked City, while not perfect, is certainly a significant piece, due to both its style and substance. Its tagline has become part of the American lexicon: “There are eight million stories in the naked city; this has been one of them.” In 2007 the U.S. Library of Congress agreed that The Naked City was a special achievement when it selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically and aesthetically signifitcant.” For Dassin, who’d been persecuted for a political belief, maybe the award was some small consolation. If so he didn’t get to enjoy it long—he died the next year. La cité sans voiles premiered in France today in 1949.

France, La cité sans voiles, The Naked City, Brute Force, Thieves’ Highway, Night and the City, Du rififi chez les hommes, Rififi, Jules Dassin, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Don Taylor, poster art, film noir, cinema, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 18

1954—First Church of Scientology Established

The first Scientology church, based on the writings of science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, is established in Los Angeles, California. Since then, the city has become home to the largest concentration of Scientologists in the world, and its ranks include high-profile adherents such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

February 17

1933—Blaine Act Passes

The Blaine Act, a congressional bill sponsored by Wisconsin senator John J. Blaine, is passed by the U.S. Senate and officially repeals the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, aka the Volstead Act, aka Prohibition. The repeal is formally adopted as the 21st Amendment to the Constitution on December 5, 1933.

February 17

1947—Voice of America Begins Broadcasting into U.S.S.R.

The state radio channel known as Voice of America and controlled by the U.S. State Department, begins broadcasting into the Soviet Union in Russian with the intent of countering Soviet radio programming directed against American leaders and policies. The Soviet Union responds by initiating electronic jamming of VOA broadcasts.

February 16

1937—Carothers Patents Nylon

Wallace H. Carothers, an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont Corporation, receives a patent for a silk substitute fabric called nylon. Carothers was a depressive who for years carried a cyanide capsule on a watch chain in case he wanted to commit suicide, but his genius helped produce other polymers such as neoprene and polyester. He eventually did take cyanideâ€”not in pill form, but dissolved in lemon juiceâ€”resulting in his death in late 1937.

February 15

1933—Franklin Roosevelt Survives Assassination Attempt

In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but is restrained by a crowd and, in the course of firing five wild shots, hits five people, including Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds three weeks later. Zangara is quickly tried and sentenced to eighty years in jail for attempted murder, but is later convicted of murder when Cermak dies. Zangara is sentenced to death and executed in Florida’s electric chair.