Jules Dassin takes to the grimy streets of London for this crime thriller about small-time American shyster Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) and his attempts to join the ranks of the criminal elite.
Harry is small fry, relegated to using his con man finesse to drive business to a local nightclub run by a man with whose wife Harry had a past fling. But he yearns for something bigger and works out a scheme that will enable him to corner the market on the London wrestling syndicate. Trouble is, there are a lot of interested parties who for one reason or another don't want Harry's plans to succeed.
The character of Harry reminded me a lot of my ex-brother-in-law. He was always looking out for that next big deal, the one that was going to strike gold. To everyone else, it was obvious that if he put as much effort into plain old honest work as he did into trying to outsmart his way to the top, he would have the comfortable life he wanted. Harry is like that, and Richard Widmark plays him perfectly. There are a couple of interesting interviews with Jules Dassin on the Criterion Collection DVD release of this movie, and in one of them he says that he always thought Widmark was a terrific actor, but that audiences never really got to see that, partly because Widmark was content within the stereotyped confines he was placed in by Hollywood. Maybe the fact that he wasn't a huge star worked to his benefit here. He gets every nuance of Harry just right. It's a performance that expertly balances Harry's cockiness and belief that he truly is smarter than everyone else if he could just get the break, and the pathetic hopelesness of a born loser who's not as clever as he thinks he is and will never know it. Widmark really gets Harry, and is able to play him as a villain and a hero at the same time.
As long as Dassin sticks to the male-dominated world of London's underbelly, he's on firm ground. His movies are always dripping in atmosphere, and this one is no exception. London lends itself very well to Dassin's stark black & white compositions. And all of the testosterone comes to a boil in a shockingly violent scene in which two arch rival wrestlers go at each other like two dogs intent on tearing each other's throats out.
But it's when Dassin turns his attention (or lack of it) to his female characters that the movie flounders. Googie Withers, playing Harry's old flame, threatens to walk away with the movie until her story comes to an abrupt end just when you think it's going to provide the movie with a juicy twist. She has all the trimmings of a true femme fatale, but Dassin does nothing with her. And one suspects that Gene Tierney is only in the film so that her name could appear on the movie posters. So overall Dassin gives us a clever story but one that feels oddly underdeveloped.
One thing I really did appreciate about this movie was its downbeat ending. Any other movie from this time period would have tacked on some completely unrealistic redemption for Widmark in the last seconds, but Dassin refrains from doing that. The violence and pessimism serve to set this movie slightly apart from other Hollywood studio fare of the time, and make "Night and the City" a closer companion to the new wave films beginning to emerge from Europe, and to which Dassin himself would contribute "Rififi" five years later.
Solidly crafted and well paced if not necessarily a masterpiece.
Grade: B+
Harry is small fry, relegated to using his con man finesse to drive business to a local nightclub run by a man with whose wife Harry had a past fling. But he yearns for something bigger and works out a scheme that will enable him to corner the market on the London wrestling syndicate. Trouble is, there are a lot of interested parties who for one reason or another don't want Harry's plans to succeed.
The character of Harry reminded me a lot of my ex-brother-in-law. He was always looking out for that next big deal, the one that was going to strike gold. To everyone else, it was obvious that if he put as much effort into plain old honest work as he did into trying to outsmart his way to the top, he would have the comfortable life he wanted. Harry is like that, and Richard Widmark plays him perfectly. There are a couple of interesting interviews with Jules Dassin on the Criterion Collection DVD release of this movie, and in one of them he says that he always thought Widmark was a terrific actor, but that audiences never really got to see that, partly because Widmark was content within the stereotyped confines he was placed in by Hollywood. Maybe the fact that he wasn't a huge star worked to his benefit here. He gets every nuance of Harry just right. It's a performance that expertly balances Harry's cockiness and belief that he truly is smarter than everyone else if he could just get the break, and the pathetic hopelesness of a born loser who's not as clever as he thinks he is and will never know it. Widmark really gets Harry, and is able to play him as a villain and a hero at the same time.
As long as Dassin sticks to the male-dominated world of London's underbelly, he's on firm ground. His movies are always dripping in atmosphere, and this one is no exception. London lends itself very well to Dassin's stark black & white compositions. And all of the testosterone comes to a boil in a shockingly violent scene in which two arch rival wrestlers go at each other like two dogs intent on tearing each other's throats out.
But it's when Dassin turns his attention (or lack of it) to his female characters that the movie flounders. Googie Withers, playing Harry's old flame, threatens to walk away with the movie until her story comes to an abrupt end just when you think it's going to provide the movie with a juicy twist. She has all the trimmings of a true femme fatale, but Dassin does nothing with her. And one suspects that Gene Tierney is only in the film so that her name could appear on the movie posters. So overall Dassin gives us a clever story but one that feels oddly underdeveloped.
One thing I really did appreciate about this movie was its downbeat ending. Any other movie from this time period would have tacked on some completely unrealistic redemption for Widmark in the last seconds, but Dassin refrains from doing that. The violence and pessimism serve to set this movie slightly apart from other Hollywood studio fare of the time, and make "Night and the City" a closer companion to the new wave films beginning to emerge from Europe, and to which Dassin himself would contribute "Rififi" five years later.
Solidly crafted and well paced if not necessarily a masterpiece.
Grade: B+