Night and the City

1950's NIGHT AND THE CITY plays with a sustained anxiousness that really lets us get to know how a guy like Harry Fabian might operate.  And think.  He's an American in London, forever angling to get rich quick, latching on to whatever product or service he truly believes will be the next big thing.  Harry has tapped the patience (and resources) of his girlfriend and many others about town in such pursuits.  Will he again prove to be a common hustler or con man, or at worst a misguided dreamer when he decides he will corner the market on professional wrestling?

Everyone tells him to get a job.  A nice, steady gig where real work is performed.  Is writer Jo Elsinger and director Jules Dassin fashioning an anti-capitalist bent? Isn't Fabian (Richard Widmark) just another ambitious entrepreneur, attempting to build a business the way so many before him have? Surrounded by proletariats who know nothing else.  The rank and file to whom financial risk is rife with danger and folly.  How many of us have dismissed friends' sales pitches? Maybe pyramid schemes, but that pyramid may have been erected by someone like Harry Fabian.

While I do not place NIGHT AND THE CITY among the Great Noirs, it's right on their doorstep.  Let's begin with a young Widmark's outstanding performance.  He's shades of P.T. Barnum, Walt Disney, and maybe Herbalife founder Mark R. Hughes.  Imagine how folks reacted to them? Maybe there was some tragedy in their lives too.  I don't consider it a spoiler to reveal that Fabian doesn't achieve their success, and is a Great Tragic Figure. Gene Tierney is appropriately concerned and forlorned as Mary, the honest and decent mate.  Francis L. Sullivan, as Phil, owner of the club in which he and Mary work, steals all of his scenes with his crafty portrayal.  A young Herbert Lom is also quite a presence as Kristo, who manages the current wrestling scene, denounced as tasteless by his father Gregorious (Stanislaus Zbyszko), a famous Greek wrestler.  The one Harry seeks to manage himself.

Then there's Max Greene's cinematography.  This is why noirs are meant to be in black and white.  London locations are gorgeous and austere.  An immersive world, perfect for Harry to race through either in anticipation or in flight from pursuers.  Dassin lends his usual meticulous direction, though never at the expense of big emotion.  My involvement in NIGHT AND THE CITY was at times curiously detached, but never once was I less than impressed with its urgency and efforts to paint another bleak portrait of the small timers who don't quite scale the heights of those street beaters who ended up in Naugahyde chairs.