Reviews Aug 20 2008 @ 09:23 am
REVIEW: Night and the City
Directed By: Jules Dassin
Written By: Jo Eisinger and Austin Dempster (uncredited) and Gerald Kersh (novel)
Starring: Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Francis L. Sullivan, Googie Withers, Herbert Lom
Running Time: 101 minutes
Not Rated
Craig Kennedy runs Living In Cinema, in my opinion one of the best film communities on the net. I actually find myself looking forward to his weekly Watercooler discussion, in which everyone gets chatty with what they’ve viewed over the past week. Imagine sitting a nice little coffee shop, talking up Batman and Judd Apatow and Jules Dassin and Satantango, and you’ll have an accurate picture of the atmosphere at LiC. In addition to all of that, Craig is also a fabulous writer. Grab a cup of coffee, enjoy his work here, and then go mingle at LiC. That’s what I’m doing.
When we first meet Harry Fabian, he’s a tiny figure racing through the streets of London. Observed first from a God’s-eye view above the city and then up close where we can see his fear and sweat, he is pursued by men looking to get their money back after another of his schemes gone bad. One way or another, whether he’s avoiding creditors or simply trying to outlast the inevitability of his own fate, Harry spends the rest of Jules Dassin’s 1950 noir classic Night and the City a man on the run.
In a murky post-war world where notions of good and evil are vague and indistinctly drawn, Harry is neither hero nor anti-hero. He’s just a schemer and a deal maker looking to get ahead. For him, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is “a life of ease and plenty” which is always just around the next corner. He’ll even steal from his own fiancée to get there. He’s a scoundrel to be sure, but his aspirations are familiar and relatable. Even in a foreign land, Harry just wants a piece of the American Dream.
One character describes Harry charitably as “an artist without an art.” Working the London underworld as a club tout, he uses his keen skills of observation and knowledge of human nature to prey on tourists, luring them to a club called the Silver Fox where they’ll be fleeced by a cadre of working girls who charge for their time and induce men to buy them overpriced cigarettes and candy.
Harry is good at what he does, but it’s not enough for him. He should be a club owner, not an employee. Always looking for an angle he can exploit or an advantage he can press, he seizes upon an opportunity he believes will lead him to the big time: control of wrestling in all London. More than just wealth and power, he wants respect, but like the mythic Icarus who flies too close to the sun and crashes back to earth, Harry’s plan steps on the toes of the wrong people and he’s ultimately doomed to failure.
His problem is not one of intelligence or motivation; it’s one of capital. Always a few hundred quid away from being able to put the next piece of his plan in motion, he’s forced to rely on other more powerful people to fund his enterprises. All of those who purport to help Harry have motives of their own and they use him as a pawn.
For Harry, it’s a complex and suspenseful juggling act. He’s so focused on keeping all the balls in the air that he unknowingly stumbles into a spider’s web of conflicting interests between a group of people more powerful than himself. There is Nosseross, the fat owner of the Silver Fox who believes Harry is trying to steal his wife Helen. There is Helen herself, a bitter, greedy woman who wants to get away and start her own club. There is the dangerous Greek who runs wrestling in London in opposition to his father, the ex-professional wrestler who scoffs at the rigged circus act the sport has become. Finally there is Harry’s innocent fiancée Mary who sings in the club and just wants Harry to settle down and pursue a legitimate life. For a time Harry is able to play one interest off another and to continually move ahead with his scheme, but it’s almost inevitable that eventually he’ll let one of the balls drop and his carefully balanced world will come crashing down.
Richard Widmark as Harry Fabian.
How does a film without a hero work? The first key is in the writing of the character Harry Fabian. Harry is a deeply flawed and frequently loathsome character yet he’s oddly admirable. He’s a motivated businessman making his way in the only business he knows in the hope of bettering himself. He’s not a greedy man. More than wealth, he desires the respect he believes he deserves. Compared to some of the gutter scum among whom he traffics, men and women who would stick a knife in a man as soon as help them, Harry is almost noble.
Besides the writing, the other key to Harry and the film is Richard Widmark’s performance. Bragging one minute and begging the next, Widmark veers deliriously between having the world in the palm of his hand and having it threaten to crush him. Vacillating between over-confidence and desperation, his face is a nervous, sweaty mask shifting from fear to excitement and back again. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell which is which. It’s a knockout performance and Widmark never tries to soften the character or give him an artificial layer of pathos. He plays Harry straight but with such energy and conviction it’s impossible not to root for his success and lament his failure.
Night and the City also benefits from a strong supporting cast. Francis L. Sullivan is suitably slimy as the ogreish club owner Nosseross. He spends most of the film in his office overlooking the Silver Fox, the windowpanes casting noirish barred shadows across the room. He’s a man in a cage or a malignant spider in a web…or both. Googie Withers plays his cold and cruel wife Helen. She’s a woman who may have been pretty once, but now she’s hardened. She can act sweet for a moment when it suits her, but underneath the façade she’s a snake. Finally there is Herbert Lom as the creepy and dangerous “other,” the Greek wrestling promoter Kristos. More refined than the lowlifes who surround him, he’s as likely to do battle with a solicitor as a henchman, but when pushed into a corner he can strike like a scorpion.
Less successful than any of the above is beautiful Gene Tierney as Harry’s fiancée Mary. It’s no fault of Tierney’s however. She makes the most of what she’s given, but it’s an underwritten and seemingly tacked-on part that does little beyond provide a balancing force for Harry’s struggles. It turns out that the part of Mary was smaller in the original script for Night and the City, but 20th Century Fox producer Darryl F. Zanuck requested that director Jules Dassin expand the part as a favor for Ms. Tierney who was having personal problems and needed to work. It’s not a fatal weakness, but it is a flaw that perhaps stops the film just short of perfection.
One character that doesn’t appear in the credits is the city of London itself. This isn’t the postcard city of Big Ben and the London Bridge. This is a bombed out, post-war London – a civic wound with the scab pulled off, infected and teeming with beggary, criminality and evil. In such a gloomy, hopeless setting, Night and the City has to be considered one of the darkest and bleakest of noirs. If the nighttime streets of Los Angeles or New York provide a sketch of what ails America in so many of the classic noirs, the underbelly of London is a microcosm of what is rotten in the world itself. It’s a place where a hustler like Harry Fabian will never get ahead. Like a man trapped in quicksand, the more he struggles the further he sinks and at the bottom lies the bitter truth: ultimately he’s worth nothing at all, either in life or in death.
This is a brutal, dark and fatalistic film and it’s tempting to wonder how much the real life circumstances of director Jules Dassin played into it. Night and the City was the last film he would make for an American studio before his membership in the Communist party in the 1930s was revealed to the House Un-American Activities Committee by directors Edward Dmytryk and Frank Tuttle. He knew this could be the last film he’d make. Unable to find work in Hollywood, Dassin would move to France in 1953. There he would revive his career as an American expatriate beginning with the perfect caper film Rififi, but the late ’40s and early ’50s were a dark and confusing time both for America and for Dassin. Night and the City is most certainly a reflection of that.
Peel away all the layers you want. Enjoy it as an allegorical tale of a man who was born a hustler and is doomed to die a hustler, or take it on its face as a suspenseful and tragic story of one man’s fatal brush with evil. Either way, Night and the City is a winner; a superb and pure example of what people mean when they talk about the sometimes vaguely defined film style known as film noir.
on Aug 20 2008 @ 9:29 am 1. Evan Derrick said …
Is it just me, or do there seem to be a lot of similarities here to Miller’s Crossing? I haven’t seen this one, but is that far off base, Craig? Your description of Fabin, that he “veers deliriously between having the world in the palm of his hand and having it threaten to crush him,” sounds an awful lot like Tom Reagan. Obviously the endings are different (Reagan is ultimately a Sam Spade character – he knows everyone better than they know themselves and plays his cards perfectly), but I wondered if there weren’t some strong comparisons to be made.
Second question: has anyone seen the ‘92 remake with Robert De Niro and Jessica Lange, directed by Irwin Winkler? Is it any good?
on Aug 20 2008 @ 10:48 am 2. Rick Olson said …
Craig: “a civic wound with the scab pulled off”: fabulous line. And a great review.
I’ll be doing Rififi later in the month. Hope I do as well.
on Aug 20 2008 @ 11:32 am 3. Phil said …
To the person who asked if the 1992 Night and the City was any good – no, it really, really isn’t.
I don’t have much to add to this is a terrific review of one of my favourite noirs, but I’d like to recommend Gerald Kersh’s original novel. While the central narrative arc is much the same as in the film, there are a few key differences, and the story as a whole is fleshed out in interesting ways with some fascinating subplots and supporting characters. The book is also brilliant at evoking the sleazy atmosphere of 1930’s Soho, and it has just been republished in a classy new edition:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-City-Gerald-Kersh/dp/0955185130/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219248994&sr=8-4
on Aug 20 2008 @ 11:41 am 4. G said …
Evan, I don’t think this is much like Miller’s Crossing at all. Partially is a matter of tone and mood: Night and the City is white hot with passion and emotion – everyone’s blood is about to boil over in every scene. Miller’s Crossing is one cold, chilly motherfucker.
I also think the similarities between Reagan and Fabian are only superficial, for pretty much the same reason. Even when you don’t realize how Reagan is playing everyone, he’s a calm and controlled fellow. Whereas Fabian’s a blatant huckster who seems to laugh, cry, or scream in every scene. That performance should have been over the top, but somehow Widmark pulls it off.
Anyone know why Gabriel Byrne’s career sucks so much when he’s such a good actor? More practically, is that psychiatrist show any good?
on Aug 20 2008 @ 11:55 am 5. joel said …
Excellent review Craig. I’ve only seen Night and the City once (but recently) and it reminded me a lot of Widmark’s performance in Pickup on South Street, another great cad. Maybe it’s that Widmark infuses both characters with a darkness so all-consuming that only his charisma and the great dialogue keep him afloat, but it’s curious that he seems to have made a career out of playing that near-impossibility: a truly unlikable character you want to see win.
The other similarity between these two films is their unflinching investigations of the seedy underbellies of London and (in Pickup) in New York. I love how you sum that up in your review. Dassin does a marvelous job of giving London an ugliness that makes it almost unrecognizable.
Evan, that’s an interesting comparison between Night and Miller’s Crossing.
on Aug 20 2008 @ 12:11 pm 6. Craig Kennedy said …
Thanks for the kind words at the top by the way.
The key difference between Tom Reagan and Harry Fabian is one of motivation. I always saw Tom’s juggling act in the service of others, but for Harry it’s pure selfishness. He wants what he wants and doesn’t care the cost to anyone else.
Reagan is also ultimately more clever than Fabian, his weakness, the thing that always gets him in trouble, is that he actually has a certain moral code as twisted as it might be. Fabian…not so much.
I never saw the remake, which is weird because I love the cast and at that time had never seen the original.
on Aug 20 2008 @ 12:19 pm 7. Craig Kennedy said …
Also, thanks to the rest of you for the encouragement. Reveiwing the classics is daunting. What can one say that hasn’t already been said or that doesn’t sound foolish?
on Aug 20 2008 @ 12:31 pm 8. Alexander Coleman said …
A most marvelous review, Craig. Your descriptions of the characters, and most especially of Widmark’s Fabian–and his electrifying performance–are superb.
I’m sure I’ve written this before once or twice, but the ending to this film is to me one of the most iconically true, devastatingly powerful codas in all of noir, so rich and crushing all at once that it can be used to define what noir is beneath everything else.
Dassin’s perspective on American greed, also seen in Thieves’ Highway, takes on a richer context here with the American huckster in London. Rififi was, coming from Dassin, partly a beautiful statement, however, that avarice knows no national boundary.
on Aug 20 2008 @ 1:17 pm 9. Craig Kennedy said …
The ending is a kick in the nuts.
The interesting thing about the movie for me is that Fabian clearly represents the worst side of Capitalism, but at the same time I think Dassin sympathizes with him as though Fabian is an example of what the system can force a man into.
Of course, you can argue no one forced Harry into anything and he’s just a creep…
on Aug 20 2008 @ 2:55 pm 10. Sam Juliano said …
I am just sitting down now to read Craig’s review, but I just want to say that I absolutely LOVE Evan Derrick’s introduction, which really tells it all, and in a most creative way!
And Craig is one of the best writers to grace the Movie Zeal site, without question. He’s top drawer.
on Aug 20 2008 @ 3:41 pm 11. Sam Juliano said …
OK, firstly: This is unquestionably one of the very finest entries in the Movie Zeal series, and it considers a quintessential work that (perhaps) not everyone has seen. What’s more it is the first film in the MZ series directed by Jules Dassin, one of the movement most supreme and integral figures.
Mr. Kennedy brings his famed rhetorical ammunition to this atmospheric and (as he contends) one of the “darkest and bleakest” noir features. Kennedy’s most extraordinary observance in my view is his stellar paragraph explaining how and why the city of London is a character in this film. It says so much and it contributes mightily to the thematic discourse.
Of course, at the outset, the assertion that Harry is neither a hero or an anti-hero is the full crux of the film’s conflict. And Kennedy’s follow-up query: “How does a film without a hero work” is considered in a most enlightening context.
The analysis of Richard Widmark’s performance is superb, as is even one on the famous Dickinsinian actor Francis L. Sullivan. Fascinating stuff.
Finally, I completely agree withe the 4 and a half star rating for this particular film. Kudos to you Mr. Kennedy!
on Aug 20 2008 @ 3:46 pm 12. Craig Kennedy said …
Sam that was like a review of a review! Awesome. Thanks.
on Aug 20 2008 @ 5:50 pm 13. films noir said …
A knockout review Craig of a great movie – a quintessential noir. I love the way you weave your commentary while relating the narrative – and without giving too much away.
I find Gene Tierney’s performance a strength: she bring moral focus to the milieu and let’s us see the sympathetic side of Harry, and she comes into her own in the final scenes. Her soft counterpoint is achingly elegant and transubstantiates Harry’s demise into the stuff of tragedy.
As she says to Harry near the end:
“Harry. Harry.
You could have
been anything.
Anything.
You had brains…
ambition.
You worked harder
than any 10 men.
But the wrong things.
Always the wrong things
on Aug 20 2008 @ 6:22 pm 14. Craig Kennedy said …
Thanks Films Noir. I had to be careful in my discussion of Tierney and I’m afraid I kind of slighted her. For her part, she’s terrific and her character as you say makes Harry’s downfall sting all that much more.
In retrospect, the oddly tacked on character is actually Hugh Marlowe as the next door neighbor Adam. He seems to appear and disappear whenever it’s convenient to the script and he’s never fully developed.
If I wrote the review again, I’d probably soften my comments on Tierney and add the Marlowe criticism, no matter how small it is.
Tiny quibbles aside, this is a terrific film. Is it just me or does this one kind of fly in under the radar? My introduction to Dassin was through Rififi and that led me to seek out his earlier American work which stands on its own.
on Aug 20 2008 @ 6:52 pm 15. films noir said …
Yes Craig, I agree the Adam character seems tacked on as a filler. I thought he would de developed more after his first appearance. As with auteurs like Welles, we don’t really know what the studio hacks did to the director’s cut in post-production.
I am drawing a long bow here, but I think the ideological spectre of HUAC still hangs over the work of Dassin, and this may explain its ‘under the radar’ status.
In your next noir marathon, Thieve’s Highway should be on the short-list.
Some more background on Dassin and Night and the City:
1. After completing Thieves’ Highway, according to an article bySandra Berg in 2002(?):
“‘Everyone heard that subpoenas were being handed out,’ says actor-producer Norman Lloyd, remembering one fateful night in 1949. ‘Dassin lived on Bronson, and there was a knock on Jules’ front door. Julie answered to find Darryl Zanuck [head of 20th Century Fox], who said, “You better get out of town.” He gave him the assignment to direct Night and the City in London. It was unheard of to have a studio executive come in person like that and try to help.’
“Dassin has never forgotten that experience: ‘Zanuck said, “You’re going to England. Get a fucking script done, begin shooting, start with the most expensive scenes and they won’t fire you, because it’s probably going to be the last picture you’re ever going to make.” I liked Darryl Zanuck! While I was working on the script, Zanuck called me and said, “I want you to write in a part for Gene Tierney. She’s going through hell, and she’s a good kid. Save her.” So I wrote her a part. She was at the end of her career. This was a side to Zanuck that people didn’t know.’”
2. An excellent tribute to Dassin’s film-making and social activism has been posted by David Walsh of wsws.org: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/dass-a03.shtml
on Aug 20 2008 @ 7:15 pm 16. Sam Juliano said …
Films Noir, YOU ARE THE MAN!!!!!!
on Aug 20 2008 @ 7:54 pm 17. Craig Kennedy said …
There’s an interview with Dassin on the Criterion DVD that is pretty moving, especially now that he’s gone, and he confirms what you say here Films Noir. I don’t know much about Zanuck, but he seemed to do right by Dassin.
on Aug 21 2008 @ 6:33 am 18. T.S. said …
Well, I’m a little late to the game in terms of compliments, but let me add my echo to the chorus and say great review. This is a great film, one of Dassin’s best noirs, and only appropriately, a great review of it.
Because of the N-sound and the City, I sometimes confused “Night and the City” with “The Naked City” (1948), both by Dassin… but the latter is a rather mediocre movie, I think.
on Aug 23 2008 @ 4:08 pm 19. christian said …
Excellent review. Dassin had a strange career. I’m awaiting release of his 1968 UP-TIGHT which played with SKIDOO…
on Aug 23 2008 @ 4:19 pm 20. Nick Plowman said …
Great review Craig, haven’t seen this one in forever.