British Gangsters: Night and the City (Dir Jules Dassin, 1h48m, 1950)

London is the home of the cinematic British gangster. Like many institutions, the criminal underworld is best found in London, in both fact; best seen in Tom Hardy's double-up as the Krays in 2015's Legend, and fiction where Cronenberg's Eastern Promises (2012) and Matthew Vaughn's slick and stylish Layer Cake (2013) are among the best recent additions to a cinematic "gang" that goes back to the 1940s. Of the many 1950s gangster films, few depict the criminal underworld of the capital like Jules Dassin's noirish depiction of a con man's unravelling, in Night and the City (1950).

Dassin, like Welles, was a product of the theatre and the radio as much as the cinema, only turning to directing after multiple stints working for RKO as an assistant director, CBS radio, and producing plays for Broadway; his debut would be the low budget, and luridly titled Nazi Agent, followed by a number of musicals and comedies, before, with the end of the Second World War, Dassin transformed into a director of noirs, most notably the stark prison drama, Brute Force (1947), and Naked City (1948), a searing drama descending into New York City's netherworld in the aftermath of a woman's murder. Heavily influenced by the work of crime photographer Weegee, who would also influence Stanley Kubrick and the musician, John Zorn, it is a stark depiction of a city without morals. 

At the Centre of Night and the City is Richard Widmark's small-time crook, Harry Fabian

Night and the City at first glance is more of this; the decision to relocate to London was not a mere creative decision. Even by the production of Naked City, Dassin's name had repeatedly been raised in the meetings of the House Un-American Activities Committee, connecting him to no fewer than three Communist-leaning or front organisations. With one film left in his contract, and with blacklisting from Hollywood imminent, so 20th Century Fox hurried Dassin to London, armed with Gerald Kersh's Dassin would later admit he'd never got round to reading it.

Like Naked City, Night and the City concentrates on the underbelly of London; our guide through this is Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark), an American spiv and con man: he is introduced in the streets of London, the cinematography by Max Greene, as he runs from street to street, before eventually arriving at his girlfriend's flat is filmed with with long chiaroscuro shadows. It's perhaps easy to compare this to the American noirs of Welles et al, but London looms in a way that, save for The Third Man's Vienna, the US Noirs never manage to do. Fabian is another of the protagonists of the Spiv cycle, and we see him almost immediately set to work on one of his many cons, attempting to convince his would-be girlfriend Mary (Gene Tierney) to back another get-rich quick scheme.

From here, we descend into the London underworld; Fabian is a denizen of this world, we see him immediately settle into it, greeting people, and showing familiarity with others: soon overhearing the former wrestler Gregorius (real-life wrestler and strongman, Stanislaus Zbyszko), disagreeing with his son Kristo (played by Herbert Lom, later to be seen in the Pink Panther films and The Lady Killers (1955), who not only controls wrestling in the East End, but has a reputation in the London criminal underworld. Hatching another plan, so Fabian quickly befriends Gregorius. In the process of building his own wrestling club, he soon finds himself ensnared, not only in business with nightclub owner Phil Nosseross (an enjoyably oily Francis L. Sullivan), and, unknown to her husband, his wife, Helen (Googie Withers), but also threatened by Kristo and his men, including the violent wrestler, the Strangler (real-life wrestler and actor, Mike Mazurki).

Alongside Fabian is a cast of crooks and club owners that Dassin slowly humanises from mere rogues

As soon as Fabian has his wrestling club, however, things begin to unravel; it is here that Dassin, much as with Naked City, lays bare the corruption, the rot, and the immorality at the centre of the East End; unlike Brighton Rock, Fabian is not an outlier, or a symptom of an underlying corruption. He is little more than a tiny cog in the great machinery of the London criminal underworld. This criminal underworld is richly developed: we see the relationship between a husband and wife, between the smugly confident Phil, and the frustrated Helen Nosseross, and a father and son, in the form of the proud Gregorius, determined to prove that his old fashioned form of Greco Roman wrestling still has a place in a city where his son's control of the sport, having long since moved on from the archaic form, is absolute.

It is easy to regard Night and the City as a film without identifiable protagonists, a film populated with criminals and crooks and where Gene Tierney's Mary is the only sympathetic, let alone redeemable figure. Yet, in Fabian's fall from grace, so the ugly side of London's criminal underworld sparks into life in its final third as a wrestling match turns ugly, its aftermath spilling out into the streets of London. For all their violence, this finale also humanises Dassin’s gallery of rogues, the characters who become embroiled one way or another in this most recent of Fabian’s scams, are also affected, such that families, businesses, and lives are destroyed in the wake of its collapse.

Night and the City is a film about criminals, about the criminal underworld, about the spivs and seedy nightclub owners, and entertainers of London; but it is also a film where London is a character, a character that looms and provides a prominent, shadowy, almost labrythine host to violence and get rich quick schemes. Night and the City is perhaps the quintessential London Noir, a meticulous depiction of the East End gangster and the small time crook, as one man's dreams of wealth and power fatally unravel.

Rating: Must See

Night and the City is available on DVD and Bluray from BFI. It is not currently available on streaming

Next week, we meet The League of Gentlemen, as we discuss Basil Dearden's ex-soldiers-turned-crooks heist-comedy.