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Post by wmcclain on Jan 29, 2020 11:31:17 GMT
Night and the City (1950), directed by Jules Dassin. Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) is a hyperkinetic "sports promoter", a cheap hustler with big talk and big plans. He's a modern man-boy, an "artist without an art" who never gets a break and is always mooching from his friends (so-called) and his girl (lovely Gene Tierney), a nightclub singer. We don't even know where he lives; he's always on the move. Harry devises a cunning plan to dominate wrestling in London. All he has to do is lie to and cheat everyone in sight. For all his scheming he is tragically oblivious to what is happening around him: he is playing games with people who will kill him for a nickel. He's still running at the end, being hunted. Mean and gritty, this is deep in the "we're screwed" end of the film noir pool. A critic at the time described it as "little more than a melange of maggoty episodes". It's not true that there are no sympathetic characters. Gene Tierney and Hugh Marlowe are decent and likeable, although they are barely in it. Herbert Lom, gangster boss, honors his father, a proud champion wrestler of the old school, so that's one commandment obeyed. The old man himself has a fierce, uncompromising sense of honor. Mike Mazurki, last seen here in Donovan's Reef (1963), is "the Strangler", and also served as an uncredited wrestling technical advisor. He was a pro not only in wrestling, but also in football and basketball (6'5"). Both he and Stanislaus Zbyszko (the old man) were the real deal and perform a long, brutal wrestling match. Franz Waxman score. Remade in 1992. Criterion DVD with an informative commentary track. Quite a lot about Dassin's struggle with the blacklist. This is the American cut, the director's preferred version.
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Post by london777 on Jan 29, 2020 20:01:18 GMT
Thanks, Mac. One of my all-time favorite movies and the first I discussed in my (faltering) Brit Noir thread: Brit NoirsAlthough it is just as much a US movie as Brit.
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Post by OldAussie on Jan 29, 2020 21:13:35 GMT
really good movie
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Post by hitchcockthelegend on Feb 4, 2020 22:25:45 GMT
An artist without an art. Night and the City is directed by Jules Dassin and is adapted by Jo Eisinger from the novel written by Gerald Kersh. Starring are Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Googie Withers, Hebert Lom, Francis L. Sullivan, Mike Mazurki & Stanislaus Zbyszko. The score is composed by Franz Waxman and Max Greene is the cinematographer. It's shot on location in London, England.
Harry Fabian (Widmark) is a hopeless dreamer, a two-bit hustler who aspires to make it big and never want for money again. Over hearing retired wrestling superstar Gregorius (Zbyszko) bemoaning the fake wrestling bouts put on by his underworld son Kristo (Lom), Fabian hatches a plan to set up his own wrestling empire backed by Gregorius. Thus he be safe from retribution from Kristo and his heavies. That is as long as Fabian does right by Gregorius and doesn't abuse his trust. Things get complicated, though, as Fabian needs money to back the venture, money he hasn't got. So systematically he drags into the equation his girlfriend Mary Bristol (Tierney), club owner Phil Nosseross (Sullivan) and Sullivan's wife, Helen (Withers). Pretty soon things start to spiral out of control.
Night and the City has been called many things, from baroque masterpiece to being a turgid pictorial grotesque! Polar opposite reactions that have now, over time, dovetailed into a majority agreement from film noir purists that it is indeed one special piece of film noir movie making. The film opens in quite an unassuming way as the title sequence brings views of leisurely London, then Dassin does a voice-over telling us that "The night is tonight, tomorrow night or any night. The city is London." We then cut to a man on the run, pursued by a person unknown. The man being chased is Harry Fabian, sharply attired in suit and hat, he has left pictorial London and is now running through bomb afflicted London, through murky alleyways. Until sanctuary comes at his girlfriend's tidy flat, the contrast between the two worlds of Harry Fabian neatly marrying American film noir with British kitchen sink-ism.
However, that sanctuary is a rare ray of hope in Dassin's movie, a cunning trick by the makers, for Night and the City is ultimately a dark and brooding picture, one that deals in corruption & paranoia, with a pervading sense of doom hanging heavy like a death warrant issued by some heavy underworld crime lord. The characters in this part of London are mainly blank personalities, cold and calculating, crooked and immoral. That Fabian is only a lesser light, on the lower rung of this seamy ladder, is irrelevant, because he aspires to become just the same, only richer. Duplicity and betrayal are things he's happy to jump in bed with, and we the audience are part of it as we view this story through Fabian's hopeless and oblivious eyes.
Yet the movie, in spite of its uncompromising story, is by turns exciting & pacey, even breath taking, driven by one of the finest scores put down in film noir as Waxman prods and probes with pulse beats and deft ear clangers. With Greene's expressionistic and daring photography blending seamlessly with the mood crafted by director and composer alike. The cast are mostly strong, with Widmark, Zbyszko & Withers actually terrific, the latter involved in a superb wrestling sequence with Mazurki. At times heart pounding, at others wince inducing - if you find yourself holding your breath - then that's OK, it has that effect on many. Tierney was cast as a favour to Darryl Zanuck who was worried about Tierney's mental health at the time. She looks radiant and offers up an interesting counterpoint to all the darkness within the story. Dassin spoke very favourably of her work on the film, saying she was no trouble at all and a consummate professional.
As for Dassin himself? Well he was, thanks to the HUAC outcry, about to be out of work and on the run. He moved to Europe and never worked in America again, he returned from film making exile five years later where he would make the much revered Rififi in France. A truly excellent director, capable of pacing a film to precision and holding an audience in an atmospheric vice like grip. Night and the City is his masterpiece, and as it happens it is also one of film noir's greatest treasures. 10/10
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Post by Prime etc. on Feb 4, 2020 22:28:26 GMT
The wrestling sequence is intense.
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Post by london777 on Feb 5, 2020 0:24:07 GMT
The Waxman score is heard in the American version. Given your glowing recommendation I will look out for it, but it will have to go some to top Frankel's original score in the British version. I wrote: ...and the score by Benjamin Frankel, a major composer who later notched up eight symphonies. Frankel's music was replaced for the American version by that of Franz Waxman. Whether this was because Frankel's music was considered too "advanced" for American ears, or because of his known left-wing sympathies, I do not know.Frankel is a favorite of mine both in the movie-house (Daybreak, London Belongs to Me, The Clouded Yellow, The Man in the White Suit, The End of the Affair, and dozens of other scores) and the concert hall.
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Post by frankkerman on Feb 6, 2020 5:05:12 GMT
Really, It was great show.
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Post by petrolino on Feb 9, 2020 18:10:27 GMT
Stylistically dazzling.
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