Jules Dassin's "Night and the City" was the last movie he made for Hollywood before becoming one of the infamous names in the Hollywood blacklist during the McCarthy era in American history but Dassin sure went out of Hollywood with a bang on this movie. The movie is based on Gerald Kersh's novel of the same name and stars Richard Widmark in one of his finest performances as Harry Fabian an American who is an ambitious scam artist who will do anything it takes to make it big time in London as a wrestling promoter. not only is Fabian an ambitious man with big dreams of his own but he also doesn't have that many people in his corner including his girlfriend Mary (Gene Tierney) who just wants to spend time and travel the world with him which is the direct oppposite o fhis innate desire just to be somebody. Fabian then befriends a legendary Greek wrestler named Gregorius (Stanislaus Zbyszko) and his protege Nikolas (Ken Richmond). Afterwards Fabian asks his friend Phil (Francis L. Sullivan) for an investment for his gym and become his business partner while his wife Helen (Googie Withers) wants to own a nightclub. But there are some more problems for Fabian with his business as Phil is no longer interested in their partnership and Gregorius's son Kristo (Herbert Lom) is very skeptical of Fabian's plans and knows his kind very well, and also tries to get a wrestler called "The Strangler" (Mike Mazurki) who happens to be a rival wrestler to Gregorius to get the two of them to fight each other. After that everything starts to unravel and the walls start to close in on Fabian which is all I'm going to say about the climax and the ending because those are crucial elements that must not be spoiled. The performances along with Dassin's direction are totally solid as well as the screenplay by Jo Eisinger. The movie isn't your traditional film noir that involves a private eye and a murder mystery which is always a good thing to always buck conventional trends with anything as long as you can make something good out of it, but the only problem I had was that it didn't floor me with suspense like other classics in the genre such as "Sunset Boulevard" (1950), "The Big Heat" (1953), "The Big Sleep" (1946), "Key Largo" (1948), or "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) among others. But the movie is one of the best movies that the noir genre has to offer and a movie that should not be missed by anyone who loves these kinds of movies.
Review of Night and the City
