Dark shadows, two-timing dames, Richard Widmark’s high-pitched giggle. It must be film noir.
Well, sort of.
Night and the City, directed by Jules Dassin in 1950, has the look of noir, but it may not be what you’re expecting if you’re used to such hard-boiled films as Double Indemnity, Out of the Past or The Big Sleep. For one thing, Night and the City is set in London. For another thing, there’s surprisingly little suspense. Finally, James M. Cain’s name is nowhere on the credits.
Cain, the author of pulp fiction classics like The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce practically invented the film noir genre on the page before Hollywood got wind of his hard-boiled tales of corruption and murder. Once something like Double Indemnity came along in 1944, Tinseltown went dark for several years.
(Actually, the French had been making film noir, or "black film" for almost a decade before The Maltese Falcon with movies that focused on mood, stylized lighting and downbeat characters. It just took Hollywood a few years to catch up to Paris.)
Night and the City (remade in 1992 with Robert DeNiro and Jessica Lange) sure looks and sounds like film noir with its gritty cinematography by Max Greene and pounding score by Franz Waxman, but something seems to be missing from its dark heart. Part of it may be the British setting (it’s hard to think of anyone saying something like "You two-timing dirty rat!" with a Cockney accent), but I think most of the non-noirism comes from a story that has none of the excitement or danger of something like Double Indemnity.
Night and the City certainly opens with a bang as we see a man running through the streets of London at dawn. That man is Harry Fabian (Widmark, reprising his giggling, Oscar-nominated shtick from Kiss of Death) and he’s just one step ahead of his debtors. Fabian is a petty hustler who works the London underworld, pulling two-bit scams for the owner of a swanky nightclub named Nosseross (Francis L. Sullivan literally playing the heavy, much like fellow noir actor Sydney Greenstreet). Fabian is one of those film underdogs who’s not too bright but he’s sure got big dreams. "I just wanna be somebody," he tells his girlfriend (Gene Tierney in a window-dressing female role).
He finally gets his chance to make a name for himself when he befriends legendary Greco-Roman wrestler Gregorius (played with amazing depth by professional wrestler Stanislaus Zbysko who only made one other movie before his death in 1967). By using Gregorius as his entree into the world of wrestling promotion, Fabian must go up against gangster Christo (Herbert Lom, the police captain from the Pink Panther movies). The irony is, however, that Gregorius is Christo’s father and Fabian is unwittingly pitting son against father.
But wait, there’s more. In order to raise the money for the first wrestling match, Fabian must borrow the dough from Helen (Googie Withers), a tough-as-nails broad who--are you ready?-- is unhappily married to Fabian’s boss, Nosseross. Like other entries in the film noir genre, there’s more twists than a pretzel factory here.
The convoluted plot, while bearing the marks of Cain, never fully engaged me. There are a few moments of tension, but they can’t make up for the long stretches of dialogue between Fabian and other characters where he spends many minutes thinking aloud. I would have preferred a more economical script that showed rather than told.
What Night and the Citydoes have going for it, however, is exquisite photography full of extreme angles and deep shadows. Strongly reminiscent of Citizen Kane, the low-angled and artfully composed frames take on a life of their own apart from the story. Sure, some of the lighting isn’t consistent from shot to shot, but what does it matter when it’s so dark and lovely?
Two-bit hustler Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) aches for a life of ease and plenty. Trailed by an inglorious history of go-nowhere schemes, he stumble...More at Buy.com
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