Capital Celluloid 2012 - Day 72: Monday Mar 12

Night and the City (Dassin, 1950): Community Film Club, Tate Modern, 6.30pm

Here's a fascinating article by Guardian film editor Andrew Pulver on this movie accompanied by a video in which he revisits the Soho settings of this British film noir. Pulver has also written a BFI Classics book on the film.


Time Out review:

'Bizarre film noir with Widmark as a small time nightclub tout trying to hustle his way into the wrestling rackets, but finding himself the object of a murderous manhunt when his cons catch up with him. Set in a London through which Widmark spends much of his time dodging in dark alleyways, it attempts to present the city in neo-expressionist terms as a grotesque, terrifyingly anonymous trap. Fascinating, even though the stylised characterisations (like Francis L Sullivan's obesely outsized nightclub king) remain theoretically interesting rather than convincing. Inclined to go over the top, it all too clearly contains the seeds of Dassin's later - and disastrous - pretensions.'
Tom Milne


Here is the trailer.