Customer Reviews

Night and the City

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Another fine film noir by blacklisted American director Jules Dassin... The plot involves a small-time street hustler in London who tries to make his mark as a fight promoter, only to find organized crime's stranglehold over the wrestling business tougher to overcome that he imagined. Richard Widmark's hoodlum, Harry Fabian, is a fast-talking small-fry, an ambitious, overreaching punk who undoes himself at every turn, and digs himself in deeper and deeper with each confrontation against the city's kingpin. Fabian has a lot in common with Tony Curtis' Sidney Falco character in "Sweet Smell Of Success." This flick doesn't share the shrill, hysterical tone of that later film, and it's the seeming cool of the characters -- and our awareness of what a loser Fabian actually is -- that give this movie its nauseating, irresistible sense of suspense. Nice... one of Widmark's best roles!

This is a review for the VHS tape of Jules Dassin's film noir
NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950). NIGHT AND THE CITY stars Richard Widmark
as Harry Fabian, a hustler on the short con who mostly works on
those taking shortcuts with the law anyway.

Harry Fabian comes across a wrestling great from the past, Gregorius, wonderfully played by Stanislaus Zybyszko, an ardent advocate of Greco Roman Wrestling with a
young protege. Harry comes up with a scheme to promote the true style of wrestling,
as oppossed to the modern style which employs everything including fists, using
the two classic-style athletes. The only hitch is that the elder
wrestler, Gregorius, more a trainer now, is the father of the man
named, Kristo,played by Herbert Lom, who controls all wrestling in London.

Through hook or by crook, Harry Fabian, much in the style of a modern wrestler,
employs every tactic at his command to make his scheme work and is close to
succeeding when finally the house of cards he has built collapses on him
once and for all.

The last third of NIGHT AND THE CITY is a feverish chase through London
after dark, at first having Harry Fabian hustling to still make the scheme
work and then just running for his life. Director Jules Dassin, who directed
THE NAKED CITY a couple of years earlier really has the touch for this sort of
film and did a marvelous job bringing it to the audience without hesitation
but plenty of tension, suspense and excitement.

By the way, this videotape has to be at least 15 years old by now and is in excellent
playing condition. I give the VHS version of NIGHT AND THE CITY a Five Star rating.