Review of Night and the City (1950) by Paul Z — 03 Mar 2009

In the vein of various a film noir, Jules Dassin's potent thriller begins with "night and the city," and a man in a suit running from unseen assailants. However, the most interesting thing about this story is that it has not much in the region of an actual "hero" and a hefty sense of a humor. Some directors of noir capture the gloomy underbelly of life's surface, which to them is flimsy and of no consequence, and some of them are hardly successful because they simply do not see past the surface, which they accept. With Night and the City, Dassin aggregates both the beautiful surface and its subterranean drabness and dishonesty by extracting sincere humor from seedy situations and having no fear of leaving the audience without a gift-wrapped manner of gratification.

This is the story of a duplicitous hustler played by Richard Widmark who dreams of the good life only by means of money. He's tried every go-nowhere get-rick-quick scheme but he has what he believes is a chance of a lifetime, planning to take control of the professional wrestling game from a Greek promoter and underworld boss, played by Herbert Lom, by manipulating him through his father, the retired wrestling superstar played by the hulking Stanislaus Zbyszko.

Even if this is a film full up with excellent acting, particularly from a knowing, dry performance by Francis L. Sullivan, and stunning moments, the very most memorable of which is one of the greatest fights on film, there are in actuality only three leading lights, and they are Richard Widmark and the title characters, Night and the City. Widmark is all flash and connivance, a lean and ravenous double-dealer, passionate about this lifestyle to which he aspires. Dassin gives the impression of having a parallel appetite, this being his first film upon leaving the US following his victimhood before the House Unamerican Activities Committee. Each setting and site is on location, and hums with it, and it wants you to feel it, and you do, from the overcrowded brick cellar nightclubs to the complex alleys, from the intense illumination of Piccadilly to the river's docks cloaked in a film of fog, this is a long way from the nonspecific urbansville so ordinary in 1940s and '50s gangster pictures and the wax phoniness of film noir's California or Nevada desert or small town sets.

At the same time as the story is shifty and the high point drenched in melancholy, this is a long way from a cheerless movie. Stridently written, shot with crystal clear distinctiveness, this is the rare break of the mold that takes home its appreciation not by boasting its impressive ambition but by exacting them with genuine self-assurance, the same means by which Dassin achieved his America-free masterpiece, Rififi.