NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Jules Dassin
Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Googie Withers,
Hugh Marlowe, Francis L. Sullivan, Herbert Lom,
Stanislaus Zbyszko, Mike Mazurki, Charles Farrell
Richard Widmark plays a small-time underworld hustler with grandiose dreams and a million schemes, all of them predestined to fail. When he overhears a conversation at a sporting event, he sees his ticket to the big time, a chance to take over London's professional wrestling racket. It turns out to be one scheme - or several schemes - too many. A gritty film noir with Widmark at his cocky, conniving best. Dassin shot it on location for Darryl Zanuck, getting out of the U.S. just ahead of the blacklist, and if the film has a pervasive sense of being hunted and hounded, maybe that's why. His next movie, the French heist classic "Rififi", wouldn't come out for another five years, and he made most of his pictures after that in Europe.
