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242
London background
Night and the City
starring: Richard Widmark, Gene
Tierney, and Googie Withers, with Hugh Marlowe, Francis L. Sullivan and Herbert Lom. A Twentieth Century-Fox Film. Director: Jules Dassin. Certifi
cate: A. Category: B. Running time : ioi minutes.
When Jules Dassin made The Naked City, the critics wrote excitedly about the air of actuality which was given to the film by using the streets and bridges of New York as the background for a thriller. The critics are not so vocal about the merits of the technique when the city used is London. Maybe it is because they know London better than they know New York and detect a certain atmosphere of pseudo
Rogues agree to differ
documentary. It is a good thing to use actual scenes where possible ; Bicycle Thieves demonstrates how effectively this can be done : but there must be integrity if the film is to be real. Night and the City is excitingly and interestingly made, but it is fake throughout, from the use of the London scenes as background to the choice of characters that people it and the motives they express.
Richard Widmark is impressive as a spiv always on the edge of working a large scale racket. He runs through London by night in a perfect fever of sightseeing. His last fatal jaunt in flight from his enemies takes him from Soho via the Festival of Britain site near Waterloo to Hammersmith over a. bridge that should have led him to the City. Francis L. Sullivan is a nightclub keeper whose premises seem to be situated either in the Criterion or London Pavilion Theatres. The camera has a habit of looking up at him from the ground, which, in view of his bulk, has an odd effect without much significance, for he does not prove to be a very big or frightening person. Herbert Lom is the menacing one. He, wegather, controls all-in wrestling all over London. His father (magnificently" played by a gentleman with the sodasyphonic name, Zbyszko) favours theclassic Greek wrestling. When Widmark corners classic Greek and Zbyszko dies as result, Herbert Lom’sfilial devotion puts a thousand pounds on Widmark’s head, dead or alive. Then we see what London’s underworld really can do. Every newsvendor, taxicab driver, pedlar and street musician seems to be in league with Lom to hunt Widmark. A taxi tour stops all round Piccadilly Circus and picks up hints from every corner.
There are ladies in the film, of course. Gene Tierney loves Widmark. in spite of himself, but she is left with Hugh Marlowe to console her when Richard is dumped unceremoniouslv" into the Thames. Googie Withers moves majestically through the film as the discontented wife of Mr. Sullivan, and Maureen Delany dresses hideously as an old hag in charge of a boat house at Hammersmith.
If you do not know London and are not worried about things like accents or probability, you may be entertained bv this film. It has lots of characters