Night and the City (1950)
A brilliant, gutsy, tightly made and beautifully photographed movie, top to bottom.
Richard Widmark is in one his best roles here as the small-time guy on the make who gets in over his head. And around him are character actors (wrestlers) and a very secondary lead, Gene Tierney, all playing vivid, sharply chiseled characters.
But it's Widmark's movie, and he is convincing when thrilled and when beaten down. We see how he believes in himself, and how disillusioned he appears to others. And London at night, filled with dead ends and narrow alleys, is ominous and glistening. The plot is interwoven and not at all simple, but thanks to an ongoing logic supplied by American director Jules Dassin, it is never confusing, just increasingly interesting.
The photography, and associated lighting, has to be admired even by people used to great noir filming. The shadows here are dark but always with a hint of detail--none of the total inky blackness blanking out large parts of the scene as in some American noirs. It's really a matter of great finesse to pull this off with such consistency, and it makes the movie a visual masterpiece. Cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum (Max Greene) is barely known outside of this film, so perhaps we can give Dassin a lot of the credit for the look, and the really dynamic framing, of so much of it.
We don't usually associate British films with great film noir styling, but here is one of the best, though the two leads (Widmark and Tierney) and the director are American, and this was officially a 20th Century Fox production. This comes just a year after that other great British noir of this period, The Third Man, with strong British creds but again American leading actors. If you like Night and the City (and you almost have to, it's really amazing stuff), you'll definitely like Thieve's Highway.
And Widmark? My opinion of him only grows over time. It's easy to typecast him in your head the way you might Robert Mitchum, but both actors have extraordinary presence of depth on the screen. Here you might get the best of Widmark.
A brilliant, gutsy, tightly made and beautifully photographed movie, top to bottom.
Richard Widmark is in one his best roles here as the small-time guy on the make who gets in over his head. And around him are character actors (wrestlers) and a very secondary lead, Gene Tierney, all playing vivid, sharply chiseled characters.
But it's Widmark's movie, and he is convincing when thrilled and when beaten down. We see how he believes in himself, and how disillusioned he appears to others. And London at night, filled with dead ends and narrow alleys, is ominous and glistening. The plot is interwoven and not at all simple, but thanks to an ongoing logic supplied by American director Jules Dassin, it is never confusing, just increasingly interesting.
The photography, and associated lighting, has to be admired even by people used to great noir filming. The shadows here are dark but always with a hint of detail--none of the total inky blackness blanking out large parts of the scene as in some American noirs. It's really a matter of great finesse to pull this off with such consistency, and it makes the movie a visual masterpiece. Cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum (Max Greene) is barely known outside of this film, so perhaps we can give Dassin a lot of the credit for the look, and the really dynamic framing, of so much of it.
We don't usually associate British films with great film noir styling, but here is one of the best, though the two leads (Widmark and Tierney) and the director are American, and this was officially a 20th Century Fox production. This comes just a year after that other great British noir of this period, The Third Man, with strong British creds but again American leading actors. If you like Night and the City (and you almost have to, it's really amazing stuff), you'll definitely like Thieve's Highway.
And Widmark? My opinion of him only grows over time. It's easy to typecast him in your head the way you might Robert Mitchum, but both actors have extraordinary presence of depth on the screen. Here you might get the best of Widmark.