Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

HeadlinesExotic Boring

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

gavin6942 A small-time grifter and nightclub tout (Richard Widmark) takes advantage of some fortuitous circumstances and tries to become a big-time player as a wrestling promoter.Jules Dassin can do film noir. And interestingly, he seems to do it best when he is a hated man. At the time this film was made, he was recently kicked out of Hollywood for his alleged Communist sympathies. And what does he do? A one-two punch of this film and "Rififi", probably his two finest works.Of course, some credit must be given to cameraman Mutz Greenbaum. Any time you have noir, it has to look the part -- the genre is just as much an art form as it is a kind of plot.

Ilpo Hirvonen "Night and the city. The city: London. The night is tonight, tomorrow night, any night." This is the opening line from Jules Dassin's "Night and the City" (1950) and, in fact, works as an excellent summary of the film-noir philosophy and the director's desolate yet honest pessimism which shaped the genre. However, as it is an extremely dark film, it's still very nice to look at because it's one of the most stylish film- noirs ever made. It's a perfect place to begin studying the genre since it presents the stylistics of film-noir as seen through a dim glass. The film begins with the protagonist, Harry Fabian, a desperate man who wants to make it big, running in the streets of the night. He is constantly on the run and, as a matter of fact, later on refers to his whole life as "running away" from something. His girlfriend tries to help him to settle down, and his neighbor characterizes him as "an artist without an art." He's a tortured soul who wants to be somebody. Although it seems that Harry ruthlessly exploits other people and is only seeking for a quick way to get rich, one can't blame him for wanting to make it big: since money really is the only form of happiness the world has ever taught him. In such a cold world even love is hard to be accepted as it is. All in all, Harry is in pursuit of a good life -- nothing more.Cynic misanthropy is the word one wants to use to describe Dassin's world view in the film. All the people lie, cheat and only seem to think of their own benefit. This bleak milieu, which is also veritably social, exhales aggressive steam while power -- an abstract force -- strangles its residents in an unforgiving grip. The kings of this world are those who cheat, but not all crooks succeed for one also needs luck. Businessmen sit in their lonely cabinets and don't really differ from common criminals. Nonetheless, they too have their own sorrows to carry: a bored wife or a dying father. Hence, the line between good and evil is never clear to Dassin. In fact, the anti-heroic protagonist isn't really that unpleasant or even bad. He lies to everybody for his own benefit, but we do not hate him. Perhaps Dassin and all of us truly relate to him and his creation of deception which slowly begins to collapse. Perhaps we see that anything that is human can't be completely alien to us.In "Night and the City" Dassin takes the style of his American films to its most perfect and brutal form which emerges to us as an extraordinary combination of strong neo-realism (Visconti) and poetic, dream-like (Hitchcock) atmosphere. The starkly precise composition and the dim lighting create a baroque look which is associated with the film's flamboyant themes of doom, vengeance and deception. Heavy contrasts of light and darkness, reflecting moral ambiguity, are present in each shot relaying a sensation of chaotic chance. How each moment can lead to a disaster; how anyone can turn into a cold-blooded beast at any second. Change is a perpetual flow, but the space remains: circumstances change, but the individual has no power whatsoever. He lies in the hands of others. He can't keep up with the run.

ZachFrances1990 A Film Noir is only as good as its city is corrupt. Night and the City presents the darkest. A Film Noir is only as tender as its women are vicious. A Film Noir is only as poignant as its hero is perilous. Meet Harry Fabian. Many disregard the character as unlikable, but I like to think of him as the most easily accessible protagonist in all of Film Noir. Richard Widmark, in his Kiss Of Death best, gives a bold, honest, engaging and truly sympathetic performance. I think when most watch Film Noir, they forget all about empathy, to truly fall in love with Night and the City, you must first empathize with its hero. Have you ever been so desperate you'd do almost anything? I have. Have you ever been so deep in a hole that it could very well become your grave? I have. Have you ever loved someone so much that you'd do anything to give her world? I have. Have you ever wanted to be somebody. I have. Harry Fabian is the desperate Man immortal. He is the most insecure of all Noir heroes, and the most certain to fail. But we're here, we're with him on his long descent straight to hell. The film's uncanny pacing will make you feel completely helpless, like Fabian ultimately does, and since you are a part of the audience and you are thereby privileged with information kept from Fabian, you become aware of the tragedy that awaits him at the end of his descent, unlike our unfortunate hero, Harry Fabian. Night and the City was directed by the exceptional and overlooked true pioneer of Noir, Jules Dassin. Dassin made a few extremely serene pictures at the very height of Noir, his best was Night and the City. Made shortly before his exile during the Communist Witch Hunts of which he fell victim to in 1952, Night and the City is everything a Film Noir should be, and everything it could have been if the genre's longevity had been harnessed and controlled early on, and if his film wasn't so easily swept aside in its time. And with God as my witness, I profess! Night and the City is better than every movie that has ever been made since then, with the one exception of Alexander Mackendrick's 1957 magnum opus and testament of the cinema Sweet Smell Of Success. Night and the City is one of the greatest films ever made, and also one of the most forgotten. Quite like what we'd expect of Harry Fabian. The way that this film seems lost simply mirrors the themes that made the film so wonderful in the first place, all Harry Fabian wanted to do was to be somebody, to be remembered. Sadly, in both film and history, he never was. And that, that makes Night and the City poetic.

CineasteWest I waited many years to see this film that had been given new life by a reassessment of the film noir period. "Night and the City" became one of those must-see films which was difficult to catch through normal channels. Luckily, NetFlix recently added it to their list of streaming films and I was overjoyed by the prospect of screening this film. However, as I watched "Night and the City," a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach told me something was amiss. Did I have the wrong film? Was the hyper overplayed about this little B&W ditty? Was this film as mediocre as I was making it out be? Well, I did have the right film, but my suspicions were correct in the other two areas. "Night and the City" has some redeeming graces such as excellent photography and some very good performances. But the film's story is pure B-picture hokem. Although it has been "revisited" by the film noir crowd, I think the New York Times original review of the film still stands"Bosley Crowther in The New York Times: "Dassin's evident talent has been spent upon a pointless, trashy yarn, and the best that he has accomplished is a turgid pictorial grotesque...he tried to bluff it with a very poor script—and failed...the screenplay is without any real dramatic virtue, reason or valid story-line...little more than a melange of maggoty episodes having to do with the devious endeavors of a cheap London night-club tout to corner the wrestling racket—an ambition in which he fails. And there is only one character in it for whom a decent, respectable person can give a hoot."I agree completely with this assessment, in fact, I labored to sit through the entire film. It's simply a waste of good direction, acting and atmosphere thrown away on a pointless story. I appreciate the efforts of recent critics to restore the prominence of little films important in the development of the cinema, but this little film noir "gem" is in actuality, a faux stone. One is tempted to make comparisions between it and "The Third Man" (for atmospherics) but "The Third Man" was scripted by the brilliant Graham Greene, while "Night and the City" is more reminiscent of a desperate Bowery Boys plot line than Mr. Greene's thoughtful entertainments.