Les forbans de la nuit

This gritty film, exposing the world of small time crooks in London, is a real masterpiece of film noir. The director, Jules Dassin, has captured this dark, dirty world perfectly and the black and white cinematography is superb. Richard Widmark is as despicable here as he was as Tommy Udo in "Kiss of Death"...it is a coup of casting. Francis Sullivan as Phil is great as the nightclub owner for whom Widmark shills and Googie Withers, one of my favorites of British film, is awesome as the unfaithful wife. Gene Tierney is wasted as Widmark's girlfriend...she does not seem to have much to do. Other support players are strong and you get to see Herbert Lom without his toupee! This is one of the best in the film noir genre and the ending pulls no punches. This is not a happy, feel good film. Highly recommended.

The more films I see by Jules Dassin, the more I wonder why he isn't better known or regarded as a director. It's been 56 years since he was blacklisted by the McCarthy-ites, but his reputation never seems to have recovered, at least not in the United States. Hopefully, more DVD releases like the Criterion version of Night and the City will bring deserved attention to his excellent body of work.

I want to call Night and the City a classic film noir, which it is, but that seems too limiting. It might be better to say that Dassin uses film noir to dig a little deeper into our human strivings and sufferings. There's a lot of sweat and desperation in the midst of this entertaining and well-paced film, and not just on the part of Harry Fabian, the small-time hustler who dreams of being great. We encounter a typically smooth and dangerous mobster who also happens to have a difficult relationship with his disappointed father. A wealthy but thugish club owner, who might be a caricature in another film noir, can't seem to express his powerful and animalistic feelings for his beautiful wife. She seems like a scheming femme fatale but turns out to have an almost quaint dream of her own. In the end, we're in the muck and mire of human foibles, a kind of low-level Shakespearean tragedy that we all live out to one degree or another. This story just happens to take place in the shadowy underworld of 1950 London.

There's a poignancy to this film that separates it from others in the noir genre. Part of this lies in the strong writing, part in the excellent acting ensemble. This is one of those rare and remarkable films where the secondary and minor actors seem like they were all giving the performance of their career. Richard Widmark probably could have done with a bit more subtlety as Harry Fabian; he feels a bit histrionic at times, but his manic energy is important to the pace of the film and the feeling of increasing desperation. Gene Tierney and Hugh Marlowe don't get to do much and seem a bit lost among all the other great roles. In an interview with Dassin included with the DVD, the director says he put Tierney in the film as a favor to producer Daryl Zanuck, adding her role at the last minute, and it feels like that at times. But, hey, it's Gene Tierney.

Herbert Lom delivers a chilling performance as Kristo the mobster, and Stanislaus Zbyszko is a miracle as his father, the once-famous wrestler Gregorious who can't stand that his son has helped kill the great tradition of Greco-Roman wrestling with his shoddy wrestling matches. The great Mike Mazurki does well as The Strangler, and the wrestling match he gets into with Gregorious may be the highlight of the film. Zbyszko and Mazurki were both former wrestlers, and the realism of their fight heightens the emotional intensity of the scene. It's the brutal scruff and claw of existence brought to life on screen for a few powerful moments.

I had never seen Francis Sullivan before, so I was pleasantly surprised by his masterful work as the club owner Nosseross. Googie Withers also does a great job as his wife Helen, managing to bring some good shading to an underwritten role. And some of the best moments of the film are delivered by minor characters such as Anna, the woman who works down on the docks; Figler, the "King of the Beggars;" and Googin the forger.

After a brief voice-over intro, Dassin starts the action with a bang, as one man chases another through the darkness of late-night London, across what looks like the plaza in front of the British Museum (???). The camera angle on this opening is fantastic, the kind of shot you want to turn into a poster and hang on your wall. And the camera work remains excellent throughout the film. The final long sequence of Harry running all over London in the foggy darkness, with the whole world seemingly after him, is an exciting and powerful climax. Quite a memorable ending to this excellent film.

Every where Richard Widmark's loser character Harry Fabian turns in this film he finds golden opportunities smothered in bad timing. Widmark utilizes a variation of that smarmy, snickering sinister giggle-chuckle that was memorialized in Kiss of Death.It serves the actor well in this film in its toned-down form but offers up a sort of pathetic body language for Fabian, the character. It may be that this American ex-patriot character is just way out of his depth. His hucksterism is not much appreciated by many of his acquaintances in this seedy London underworld. If Harry Fabian would simply accept that he is destined to be a 3rd rate shill and stooge,he might have fund some small pleasures. However, his mind is a shade too quick and his ambition too pumped. He's a user with not a shread of remorse about stepping on others, ripping them off, keeping one tiny step ahead of exposure. This is a superb film, squalid and sinister in its portrayal of greed, corruption and betrayal.

Recently out on Criterion DVD, with a restored print, this is a very nice example of 1950s film noir, although when it was made the director, Jules Dassin, didn't even know there was a classification known as film noir. In fact, the DVD extras, which include a fairly recent interview with the aging Dassin is as captivating as is the movie itself. Back in the late 1940s when "blacklisting" was a reality, Dassin was essentially told, go to London quickly, make this movie quickly, it may be your last. He made "Night and the City" without ever reading the source material, the book, and the movie is apparently quite different. Two versions were made simultaneously, using the same source film, but with different musical composers and different film editors. The DVD extras contains excerpts to demonstrate some of the differences, including a drastically different ending.

Good movie, worth a viewing for the acting of underrated Richard Widmark who plays Harry Fabian, an American post-war hustler in London. Fabian had big ideas of half-baked schemes and always was hitting up a friend for a hundred quid here, 300 quid there, to finance his latest get rich quick scheme. In the extras we learn that Gene Tierney was requested for the part of Fabian's girl Mary Bristol, because she was in a bad way after a recent romantic breakup, and according to Dassin "was suicidal." This movie helped bring her back to a good state.

Googie Withers, an actress I had never heard of, is good as Helen Nosseross, married to the rich but disgusting Phil (Francis Sullivan) and just wanting to get a license for her own night spot and a chance to break away from her husband. She is forced to deal with Fabian, a decision that cost her dearly.

Perhaps the most interesting actor is Stanislaus Zbyszko, one time "world's strongest man" from Poland, in 1949 living in New Jersey. Even though he was unexperienced, he gives a super performance as an old retired wrestler Gregorius the Great, who was grooming his son for a wrestling career. Mike Mazurki plays his nemesis, The Strangler.

Although the story gets a bit complex in the various relationships, it simply distills into Fabian seeing an opportunity to contract Gregorius to feature a wrestling match that will allow Fabian, at least in his eyes, to "control" wrestling in London. But his various scams catch up with him and all does not turn out well, as is the case in a film noir.

My favorite Richard Widmark performance on the screen and probably his best work is Night and the City. This was director Jules Dassin's last film before settling in Europe in the wake of the blacklist and it has a first rate cast tuned to a fine pitch, like an orchestra without a bad note in it.

Harry Fabian is this smalltime American hustler/conman who's settled in London and always working that middle ground netherworld between the law and outright gangsterism. He really isn't a very likable man and the trick is to keep the audience care what's happening to him. This is the test of a great actor and Widmark is fully up to the challenge.

Fabian while working one of his cons overhears a piece of information about the father/son relationship between champion Graeco-Roman wrestler Gregorius the Great and gangster/promoter Cristo who is the London version of Vince McMahon. He cons Gregorius into thinking he wants to promote old style wrestling like Gregorius used to do. That con game sets in motion the events of the film that ultimately end in tragedy.

The cast is uniformly fine, but one performance really stands out, that of Stanislaus Zbyzsko as Gregorius. He was a real professional wrestling champion back in the day when it was real. Zbyzsko invests so much of his own life and reality as Gregorius that he's really something special. His scenes with Herbert Lom as his son are so good they go far beyond the plane of mere acting. It's some of the best work Lom has ever done as well.

How there weren't a few Oscar nominations from this is a mystery for me. For those who like film noir, this should be required viewing. Especially for you Richard Widmark fans.