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.
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