FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

jovana-13676 Since we are now in Cold War II, this movie deserves to be revisited. Ten minutes into the film with no dialog, and then twenty, and the music just keeps your stomach turning to the very end with no spoken word. I'll give it a star and a half just for this bold silent experimentation in the talkies era. This film predates European art films that would emerge a decade later and emulates the great Russian experimental films of the silent era with its splendid photography and acting. I'd give Ray Milland another Oscar for this. By the end of the movie he does look ten years older.

markwood272 Saw this 3/15/16, via YouTube.An obvious comment, but yes, here in this dialog-free film is "pure cinema", a narrative film that aggressively distinguishes itself from word-based art forms of written literature and theater.The movie revisits in inverted form Hollywood's big problem of the late 1920's, the transition to sound. Back then moguls sorted out who among the silent era stars could succeed with a dialog track (Laurel and Hardy, Ronald Colman, Garbo in a nail-biter) and who could not (Emil Jannings, famously). Here the lead is played by one of cinema's great line-deliverers, Ray Milland, giving an artistically complete performance with no more voice than Lon Chaney had in "Ace of Hearts" (1921). Milland's Dr. Fields worked for me even though his communicative activity is limited to picking up a discarded cigarette wrapper or anxiously staring at a telephone as we join him in counting how many times it rings."The Thief" also carves out a single-occupancy niche all its own, consisting of what might be called "pure espionage cinema". Through its wordlessness the film transports the audience into the secretive, hermetic world of the high-stakes nuclear spy. For Dr. Fields every utterance is a potential admission, casual conversation a revelatory trap. Writer-director Russell Rouse, working with Clarence Greene, gave Fields his Miranda warning. Fields by necessity exercises his right to remain silent. It is another entry in the cinema of "subtraction", a film that forgoes one or more cinematic components expected (and too often demanded) by a viewer. The film joins other subtractive works, such as "La Jetee" (1962), which dispenses with continuous motion for its Mobius-strip narrative, and "Rififi" (1955), whose middle, suspenseful act cuts the music. Then there is "Pulp Fiction" (1994), shuffling the deck of narrative sequence.The music is as emotionally hammering as anything this side of Alban Berg's "Wozzeck" (an interesting TV movie version appeared in 1972) or Ennio Morricone at his thundering best in "Un Uomo a Meta" (1966). Sam Leavitt's cinematography, combined with the music of Herschel Burke Gilbert, join the audience in Field's torment. Much of the action (and there is a lot) reminded me of "Vertigo" (1958) as James Stewart broodingly trails Kim Novak, with the images on screen acting as commentary on the score.Maybe "The Thief" is not for everyone. Hard to tell. Those who found the last seven minutes of Antonioni's "The Eclipse" (1962) completely appropriate and understandable will likely hold "The Thief" in high regard. On the other hand, this is probably not the movie for viewers who feel the need to ask after a half hour, "Why isn't anyone talking?"

1bilbo How different this film is to modern day mush!Ray Milland conveys everything you need to know about each scene with a facial expression or a slight nuance – we never see what the secret notes say but we don't need to. We also don't hear what the FBI agents say to each other as they work their strategy of tracking him – again we don't need to.The suspense is created by the smallest of mistakes – the tiny camera left on the desk, the film nearly found in the library. Also the woman in the flat – we would think she is a prostitute at first but in a later scene she is just a teaser – or was she an enemy agent placed in the building to watch him? The whole character is left to the viewer to decide.The photography is top notch – part of the atmosphere is here created, the film is worth watching for this alone.This film is for an intelligent audience who still have the capacity to work things out for themselves. I give it 9/10 only because the Empire building scenes were a little predictable – still a terrific film.

moviegoingcat Possibly because it was made in 1952 during the height of the McCarthy period, certain aspects of the plot seem to go unmentioned in the descriptions of the film that you find in Film Noir books. It is not just that the protagonist has become unwilling to go on spying. It is apparent from indications of his aversion to women that he is homosexual and is being blackmailed because of this. The lack of dialogue helps to keep this plot in line with the mentality of the 1950's. He was certainly not doing it for money or because of his political beliefs. It is a brilliant film in every way. I think that it has gone unappreciated to some extent because it has been classified as an anti-communist propaganda film. This is particularly ironic since the FBI agent pursuing him later in the film does a very stupid thing. (Not the kind of thing J.Edgar Hoover would have liked to see in a film.) (Comment by June of JoeJune)