In 1949 Daryl F. Zanuck shipped the emerging great noir director Jules Dassin off to make "Night and the City" in London before the House Un-American Activities Committee could subpoena him to testify about his Communist Party membership during the 1930s. (Dassin's name had already been named by fellow directors Edward Dmytryk and Frank Tuttle (and Elia Kazan?). Dassin was blacklisted in Hollywood and remained in Europe for decades. (He did not direct another movie until the immortal heist film "Rififi" in 1955.)

Jules Dassin (who was born in Connecticut, but grew up in Harlem) died Monday in Athens, a week after the star of "Night and the City," Richard Widmark (a native of Sunrise, Minnesota) died in Connecticut, "Night and the City" may be the best film of both director and star as well as being one of the best noir films.

Widmark was harder boiled (indeed, outright psychotic!) in "Kiss of Death" and "No Way Out" and also outstanding as the hero in (Kazan's) "Panic in the Streets" and the main prosecutor in "Judgment at Nuremberg" (written by Abby Mann, who also just died) and as ambiguous characters in Sam Fuller's "Pickup on South Street" (a pickpocket) and André de Toth's "Slattery's Hurricane" (a disgraced/rouge pilot).

And Dassin is probably better remembered for his long-term partnership (onscreen and off) with Melina Mercouri (1920-1995) in The Law, Never on Sunday, Phaedra, Topkapi, 10:30 PM Summer (a terrible movie!), Promise at Dawn, and A Dream of Passion. Dassin thought that his best film was his 1957 adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis's He Who Must Die (which I would very much like to see, along with "A Dream of Passion") than for his Hollywood noirs (Brute Force, The Naked City, Thieves' Highway -- the first a prison drama, the second a police procedural innovatively shot on location in the streets of New York City, the last shot in the old produce market on San Francisco's waterfront).

Turning to the movie "Night and the City," which is available on a splendidly-rendered-print Criterion edition DVD with two interviews (decades apart) with Dassin it is a sort of sports movie -- the same sort as Rod Serling's "Requiem for a Heavyweight" and Robert Wise's "The Set-Up," which is to say heavily tainted by organized crime fixes.

Small-time (very small-time) hustler/shill Harry Fabian (Widmark) desperately wants to make it big, to be an important gangster instead of a marginal con man in London. He steals from and otherwise exploits his girlfriend Mary (Gene Tierney [Laura]), who is a not very good singer at the Silver Fox, a dive owned by the repulsive (in every way) Phil Nosseross (Francis L. Sullivan). Harry gets some money from Phil for steering American tourists to the Silver Fox.

Harry concocts a plan to take over London professional wrestling (who knew?) from the slimy and vicious current kapo Kristo (Herbert Lom {A Shot in the Dark]). He persuades Kristo's father, Greco-Roman style wrestling legend Gregorius (Stanislaus Zbyszko) to come out of retirement (yes, he is old!). Harry gets financing from Phil and Phil's wife Helen (Googie Withers -- love that name! she was the ingenue of "The Lady Vanishes" before WWII). Harry's plans do not work out and he has a desperate run through the streets of a city of night (it happens to be London, but any city would do, and it is most certainly not the tourist London on display!).

Whether Harry finds redemption is a matter of interpretation about which viewers are divided. Crime doesn't (by the US Motion Picture Production Code, couldn't) pay, and unlike in "Street With No Name" (1949) Widmark ends not with a bang, but a whimper, an exhausted whimper at that.

The extraordinary cinematography -- with distorting angles (many very low ones), menacing shadows, and claustrophobia-inducing alleyways that were extreme even for a noir film -- was provided by Max Greene (Mutz Greenbaum, 1896-1968 [I'm All Right Jack, Lucky Jim). In that he lensed not other noirs, I'd give considerable credit to Dassin (especially having seen both "The Naked City" and "Thieves' Highway" recently).

Dassin called on Widmark to display a huge range of emotions and to show both the contemptible lowlife that Phil and Kristo see and the intelligence and ambition that Mary sees. Widmark took the challenges in stride (and was more interesting as a villain and as a morally ambiguous antihero than he was as the good guy in his later movies). The wrestlers (Stanislaus Zbyszko and Mike Mazurki) also deliver impressive characterization, and I don't think that Lom was ever better. Gene Tierney was not much of an actress (though very beautiful).

The Criterion release has a commentary track by Glenn Erickson that is supposed to be excellent. A bonus feature on the English and American musical soundtracks is fascinating, the two Dassin interviews even more so (they are very candid about the film and the blacklist and Elia Kazan...). Dassin said that he had not been able to get a copy of Gerald Kersh's novel before filming had to begin, so that Dassin's screenplay is not an adaptation, only using the title (understandably puzzling and annoying Kersh).

The movie is dark both in its extravagantly noir look and in the darkness in the souls of its characters.

I have to say that even more depressing than Harry's failures is that Dassin was unable to get financing to make any movies after 1980 (Circle of Two). He was ready, willing, able, and eager (see the end of Macresarf1's excellent review of "Night and the City") but could not get financing, de facto a second blacklisting. Although Widmark did not get the lifetime achievement awards (in particular an Oscar) that he deserved, he at least left a substantial body of work. (Both Dassin and Widmark made some dogs, but also made some memorable films in addition to "Night and the City."

© 2008, Stephen O. Murray

In that I was able to check this out from the San Francisco Public Library, it is another treasure to credit for the National Library Week writeoff in addition to being my tribute to Dassin and Widmark.





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