Night and the City (1950)

Film: Night and the City (1950)
Stars: Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Googie Withers, Hugh Marlowe, Francis L. Sullivan
Director: Jules Dassin
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Throughout the Month of June, as a birthday present to myself, we'll be profiling 15 famous film noir movies I've never seen (my favorite film genre).  Look at the bottom of this review for some of the other movies we've profiled.

We are at the exact midpoint of our series about film noir, and it's worth stating that I'm having a marvelous time here.  Film noir is by-far my favorite genre, which is why we're doing this as a birthday present to myself, but it's also a genre that it's easier for me to see past the flaws.  The desperation in the leading men, the worshiping of beautiful, talented actresses, the lighting, the scores-these are all motifs that I eat up no matter how often I see the pictures, and one could be forgiven for thinking I might be being a bit generous in my reviews.  However, Night and the City is perhaps the best example of a movie that it'd be very easy to look past the flaws.  You have some truly memorable acting, some great plot devices, but it's also kind of a mess if you don't get distracted by the shiny objects.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers around Harry Fabian (Widmark), a conman around London who is always on the fuzzy end of most deals.  He has a rough relationship with his sweet, kind girlfriend Mary (Tierney), and works for a nightclub owner Phil (Sullivan) and his wife Helen (Withers), who appears to be the brains of the operation.  By chance, he finds himself in a deal with a wrestling legend who wants to start his own wrestling club, and is the only man in the city who can do it, because his son Kristo (Herbert Lom) owns the racket, but won't go against his own father.  Harry finds this to be a great deal, understanding that as long as he keeps the father around, Kristo can't touch him and he can score an easy amount of money as a wrestling promoter-he just needs the money to get started.  Meanwhile, Helen is trying to strike out on her own, leaving her fat husband for her own bar, and creates a situation where she will trick Phil into giving Harry the cash, and in the process he'll get her the money she needs to start her own club, and he'll use his seedy connections to get a license to start that club (there's also a lot of indications that she wants to sex up Harry despite hating him, but this goes nowhere).  Eventually the wrestling father dies in a fight, putting a mark on Harry's head, and Helen's plan also backfires when she tells off her husband, and then when she comes crawling back she finds out he's dead, and has disinherited her, leaving her bereft.  The film ends with Harry dying, trying to get Mary the money that is ransomed on his head, and Kristo's assassin also getting arrested.

That's a lot of plot, and it's worth noting that in a lot of ways the movie seems to be borrowing from the "no frills" approach employed by a flick like Detour.  Withers, for example, is clearly giving off a similar vibe to Ann Savage, and is the best part of the movie.  There's so much malice, cruelty, and sheer ambition that you can't fathom she won't get away with her crimes, and when she falls, essentially being put at the mercy of a washerwoman when she'd humiliated herself for years at the hands of a detestable man...it's pretty fucking bleak.  This film is right on the edge of cult-film famous/forgotten, but man if it started to play in midnight showings it'd be easy to see people becoming obsessed with Withers here.

But the actual film itself is a mess.  Widmark, typically a very fine actor, is all over the place as Harry, and instead of finding the desperation and soul of a fascinating character, he spends most of the movie instead just eating the scenery.  Tierney was suffering a severe bout of depression at the time (legend has it that she was only hired onto this movie as Jules Dassin's way to make sure she didn't kill herself), so she can be forgiven for doing almost nothing with this part, but man it's strange to see Laura Hunt herself reduced to a sniveling doormat of a girlfriend.  Dassin was about to be blacklisted, so that might have been part of the reason the movie feels so rushed, but Night and the City is one of those films that has contains many really cool elements, but doesn't work out when you gel them together.

Previous Films in the Series: In a Lonely Place, They Live By Night, Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, The Killers, The Woman in the Window, The Big Sleep