Night and the City

Few films are as drenched in fear, anger and desperation as Night and the City. It was Jules Dassin’s first film in exile from America after being blacklisted for alleged communist sympathies and his experience seeps into every aspect of this breathless adaptation of Gerald Kersh’s eponymous novel about a small-time American huckster trying to make it big in the London wrestling rackets.

Star Richard Widmark embodies the futile anxiety of the film as Harry Fabian, the scam-artist who over the course of the film slowly drowns in his own ambition. Like a caged rat, Harry feverishly scurries through the labyrinthine back alleys of a post-war London, his eyes rolling and beads of sweat popping from his forehead as Dassin’s unrelenting camera follows him every step of the way, peering into the darkest corners of a London underworld that pulsates with malevolence and despair. A seminal film noir. [Michael Jaconelli]