• Night and the City

8/9/23 (Wed)

Jules Dassin’s 1950 film does for postwar London what his The Naked City three years earlier did for postwar New York. I learned afterwards that there are two versions of this film: one edited for the UK and Commonwealth, and the other for the US and the rest of the world. Neither was overseen by the director, who was kept away from the Commie-hating authorities in the US due to his liberal past, but he later expressed a preference for this one, the US version. The UK version reportedly treats the slimy protagonist more sympathetically and offers a more positive ending, making me glad I watched this one instead.

The film again opens with narration as in Naked but fortunately just to set the scene and does not repeat. After a view of a quiet London night, a man suddenly comes running into the scene with others in pursuit, starting the show off with a bang. Low-life hustler Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) always has a great get-rich-quick plan just within his grasp and does whatever it takes to make it happen, regardless of whom he has to mow down along the way. He’s less evil than reckless, described aptly as “an artist without an art”. We get a sense of that right away: having eluded his pursuers, he rushes into his girlfriend’s apartment and, thinking that she’s out, starts to go through her purse.

He comes up with a scheme to break the wrestling monopoly held by the mafia-like promoter Kristo (a serpentine Herbert Lom), enlisting no other than Kristo’s beloved father Gregorius the Great, a legendary but aging Greco-Roman wrestler who objects to his son’s show biz approach to the sport. Kristo is appalled at having been outmaneuvered and warns Harry to treat the old man with dignity.

Harry, who also works part-time hustling people into a nightclub, manages to con the needed money out of the owner’s wife, who herself steals the cash from her despised but rich husband. The wife thinks she’s paying Harry to get a license for her own nightclub so that she can leave her marriage, only to discover later that the license is forged and the money gone. Meanwhile, Harry, desperate to get a big name for his first fight, lures the popular Strangler, the very wrestler that Gregorious berated as show biz in the first place. A harebrained scheme to bring them together in advance leads to a vicious battle between the two giants inside the training gym. After the astonishing contest, Gregorious proves victorious, but the exertion causes his heart to fail and kills him. He dies in his son’s arms.

The son, livid, puts out a huge reward for Harry’s head. Harry runs to everyone he knows, but all have turned against him. With men all over the city on the hunt for him, he finally takes refuge in the shop of a black marketer acquaintance. He is visited by his girlfriend – not sure how she knew he was there – who gives him cash and a way out. Rather than run away, however, he takes the one unselfish action of his life: he runs out into the streets screaming to his girlfriend’s shock that she has found him, hoping that at least he can get her the large reward for finding him and repay her for her kindness. He is soon caught, his neck broken, and his body dumped unglamorously into the Thames. Kristo, looking from above, flicks ashes from his cigarette emotionlessly over the spot and exits.

Comparisons with The Third Man seem apt, especially the shadowy chase scenes inside, through and around the narrow buildings and stairways. But that film views the story with a jaundiced eye, whereas Night is deadly serious. Dassin’s London is the seamy side: hustlers, thieves, dealers in contraband, and more. The lovely shots of the bridge and Parliament in the back contrast with squalid streets and dingy buildings in a city still pockmarked from the war. None of the many sordid characters who populate the story feel artificial; the casting, script and direction render them frighteningly credible. The corpulent nightclub owner is a boorish Dickensian character who foolishly thinks he can win his wife over with money; the wife, a calculating woman who’s not about to be pushed around (both come to unhappy ends); Kristo, a heavy whose demeanor makes it clear that he is not a person to tampered with; and so forth. The script is lean and mean. When the Strangler bursts angrily into the nightclub in search of Harry, he knocks everyone aside and barrels through single-mindedly like a train driving through the crowd, with no ceremony or wasted drama or clever dialogue. He simply gets the job done.

Widmark is constantly nervous and sweaty, wound up like he’s ready to explode at any moment. He reminded me of Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success. It’s not clear why they picked an American for a movie completely steeped in its Englishness other than the need for star power, but he justifies their choice. Gene Tierney, apparently cast on the order of the producer in order to help cure her depression, was fine as Widmark’s put-upon girlfriend, but Hugh Marlowe was rather bland as the guy upstairs. Others were near perfect, especially Googie Withers (It Always Rains on Sunday), delicious in her role as the scheming wife plotting her independence from the rich husband who unwisely dotes on her; the gargantuan Francis L. Sullivan, a tremendous foil as her husband; and Lom as the wrestling boss who does not take well to Widmark muscling in on his turf. Special mention goes to non-actor Stanislaus Zbyszko, an actual former world champion wrestler who made the part his own. I’m not sure if he choreographed the thrilling wrestling sequence, but it looked absolutely real. The usual sport in these films is boxing, but wrestling is grittier and proved a fantastic substitute. (Trivia: Zbyszko’s protégé in the film, the hunky 6’5” Ken Richmond, was one of the near-naked guys who rang the gong at the start of Rank Studio films.)

A tremendous noir film and a great work of any genre. Strongly recommended.