Cycle index

Night and the City

dir. Jules Dassin / UK 1950 / 101’

subtitles: Polish and English

Special Screenings Broken Embraces, By the River Nowhere, Lost Highway, Night and the City, Not Quite Hollywood, Photography Is a Tough Craft, Revisit, Saraband, A Breath with Pina Bausch, One Day Pina Asked Me Section index

Cast

Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Googie Withers, Hugh Marlowe, Francis L. Sullivan

Film description

The film was selected by Almodóvar specifically for the ERA NEW HORIZONS festival. It is one of the works that inspired the Spanish master during his work on Broken Embraces. Night and the City, an adaptation of the novel by Gerald Kersh, is a story about Harry Fabian, a man who desperately looks for a way to get a lot of money; but whatever he starts turns into a failure. One day, he meets Kristo, the boss of the criminal underground and son of Gregorius the Great (played under a stage name by the legendary Polish wrestler Stanisław Cygankiewicz), the most famous wrestler in the world. Harry concocts a plan which cannot fail. The film, made in 1950, is considered a masterpiece of film noir. For Jules Dassin it was the first film made after his departure from the United States - he had been forced to leave the US because of the anti-communist hysteria of McCarthy. The critics regarded this experience as one of the sources of the extraordinary suggestive power of this film made in London - the depressing atmosphere of the dark labyrinth of the city, governed by the law of force, where no one can be trusted and where a high price is paid for ambition. In 1992, the film was re-made, starring Robert De Niro and Jessica Lange.

Szymon Holcman