***Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-The Stuff Of Dreams- Harry’s Dreams- Richard Widmark's “Night And The City"

 

DVD Review

Night And The City , Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Herbert Lom, directed by George Dassin, Paramount Studios, 1946

No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy: films like Out Of the Past, Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and The Big Sleep need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass, or as in Gilda a double nod for the plot and for the femme fatale. (Be still my heart, at the thought of Rita Hayworth, ah, dancing and singing, okay lip- synching, and looking, well, fetching while doing those difficult tasks.) Some, like the film reviewed here, Night and the City, while not strong on plot line or femme fatale-ness (ouch) get a nod for other reasons. Little reasons like having a young Harry Fabian, oops, Richard Widmark, practically scream out his grifter’s dreams with his expressive face. And have that face, the faces of other characters in the film, and places beautifully directed and captured on film. Not bad for a B-rated movie.

But now to the characterizations that make this such an interesting and well-acted (by Richard Widmark anyway) film. You know, know deep in your bones, if you were brought up in a working- class or poor neighborhood, and maybe in other neighborhoods too, the grifter, drifter, midnight sifter Harry Fabian played here by Widmark, The guy, and it was almost always a guy back in the days, who was smart, well smart enough, friendly, well almost too friendly, always willing to accept a little dough, a little touch dough for his endeavors, always with a little larceny in his heart, always looking for easy street, always looking for the short cut to glory, and never quite getting there.

 

Cheap street dreams, penny ante stuff, an odd midnight heist around the neighborhood here (never in the Mayfair swells’ backyard always nearby nothingness), a flim-flam mark rope-in there (some were beauties, basically working off the Ponzi scheme but you had to know how to pull out fast before the house of cards fell and get the hell out of that town too, fast) Guys I knew were a little less refined they specialized in a little jack-rolling, you know, get some poor schmo down some dark alley, or maybe he is there already drunk or in some other tough condition and pop him for his dough, his paycheck for the wife and five kids minus the ten bucks he spent at the Dublin Grille. That was not Harry’s line but he was never that desperate or big enough to pull such lowbrow capers off. But he too knew guys like that, was around the edges of guys like that. Guys who would chain-whip you like I saw Red Riley do one time just because some corner boy was not his right corner but in Red’s.  And, Harry or Red, always, always, having to be fast of foot, and fast of sneak away to stay just the south side of the law when that surefire scheme also goes south. That’s our Harry, no question.

And Harry was the guy that your mother warned you about from early on to not be like or you would "wind up just like him." And that was the magic mantra that held you in check, for a while anyway until you got your own Harry thoughts. And if I had to visualize my neighborhood Harrys then one Richard Widmark, a young Widmark would not be a bad way to do so. No question jut-jawed, slightly hazy wide-eyed, made for no heavy-lifting, light of foot and made to slip into small dark places Widmark would make the top of any crime noir aficionados idea of guy that fits the bill in this genre.

And grifter Harry had a dream which is central to the plot. The dream like those of a million other grifters, drifters and midnight sifters, hell just every poor guy looking to get out from under, to get out from under, and to, as Harry constantly put it, “be somebody.” Yes, that's the ticket, and that idea drives the story line (and Harry’s angst). See Harry’s dreams, Harry's immediate post- World War II London-set dreams are not earth- shattering to say the least, at least on the face of it. Just to corner the wrestling racket market and become an important impresario to the plebeian masses that throng to such events. Problem is, as is always the grifter’s fate, the market’ s already cornered, already sewed up and already underworld muscle-protected.

So Harry tried an end-around using the head wrestling mobster’s (Herbert Lom) father to promote real wrestling, that is Greco-Roman wrestling which is said head mobster’s father’s specialty. Yes, I know already you can see Harry’s problem a mile away, even if he cannot. Other than about twelve hard-core Olympic Games aficionados nobody cares, wants to care, or will ever care about Greco-Roman wrestling. Certainly not against the masked marvel, bad boys, “real” wrestling that is (now) driven by teenage boys (and teenage girls, a little). But that was Harry’s opening and he was bound to take it, working his “magic” on the father who was some kind of Greco-Roman aficionado maniac himself. The clash is on, including a stellar defense of Greco-Roman wrestling in the flesh by the old man.

Of course like all old men who try to do a young man’s work he overexerted himself and died after the heat of battle. Such things happen, but for Harry this is the kiss of death because as it turns out the head mobster was fond of his father, very fond. Harry’s number is therefore up. And watching the scenes and gritty faces of the actors in the process of that number being up drives the last portion of the film and makes this a true noir classic.

Note: No femme fatales here, obviously, but there are women who enter Harry’s life. One, an unhappy wife of a mid-level grafter, wants to use Harry to get out from under her own heavy burden of marriage to said grafter. More importantly, and a little incongruously, Harry has a straight girlfriend, straight with the law, of sorts, played by Gene Tierney, who loves/protects him through thick and thin. And who Harry doesn’t have enough sense to stick by, except when he is in trouble- needing quick dough mainly. It was painful from my own knowledge of such things, having grabbed a few mother’s purse dollars myself, to see Harry rummaging through her pocketbook looking for dough to make some awry deal right, to allow him to “be somebody” for another five minutes. Whoa.