on the run
by Douglas Messerli
by Douglas Messerli
Jo
Eisinger (screenplay, based on a novel by Gerald Kersh), Jules Dassin
(director) Night and the City / 1950
In those few early minutes we get the gist
of the whole story. Fabian is a punk, a would-be dreamer constantly running
into the lure of pipe dreams while running away from his debtors. This time he
tries to convince Mary—a beautiful club singer who inexplicably is in love with
the sleazy Fabian—that he just needs a few quid to buy a dog track, a half lie,
since he really needs the money to pay off an overdue debt which has
necessitated his race through the London streets. He may also want to get money
to pursue his newest scheme, but it doesn’t matter: Harry Fabian will never get
ahead of his own past.
So too is Dassin’s whole film a kind of hallucination,
an over the top presentation of outrageously nasty underground gangsters such
as Phil Nosseross (Francis L. Sullivan), owner of the Silver Fox Club; Kristo
(Herbert Lom), who controls the fighting scene of London; and Figler, King of
the Beggars (James Hayter), a figure right out of The Threepenny Opera, along with their molls, in particular Helen
Nosseross (in a wonderful performance by Googie Withers), who puts up with her
husband with hopes he’ll soon drop dead, and their soldiers, Fergus Chilk
(Aubrey Dexter), who works as Kristo’s lawyer, and Fabian himself, whose
everyday job is to bring in wealthy, unsuspecting travelers and tourists into
Nosseross’s club. Other than Mary, who performs at the Silver Fox, the only wholesome
figure in the entire film is Adam Dunne (Hugh Marlowe), Mary’s likeable if
somewhat emasculated neighbor. He begins the film by unsuccessfully attempt to
boil pasta, an act, even if a failure, that is unimaginable for any other male in
this movie, but just possibly may have won her heart by film’s end.
While attending one of Kristo’s wrestling
matches—you know, the kind with everyone dramatically leaping upon their
opponent’s prone bodies, sometimes two at a time—Fabian overhears a conversation
between Kristo’s formerly famous Greco-Roman wrestling father, Gregorius the
Great (Stanislaus Zbyszko) and Nikolas of Athens (Ken Richmond), and up-and-
coming
Greco-Roman wrestler taught by Gregorius. What’s clear from the conversation
that Fabian overhears is that Gregorius is not at all happy with the kind of
wrestling his son is promoting, declaring that he is about to return to Greece
with Nikolas in tow. Suddenly, the constantly plotting Fabian has a new scheme:
sign Gregorius and his wrestler and create a new sensation that will set him up
as the king of the London wrestling scene. Forget that Londoners are not at all
interested in the old style, fair-playing wrestling, Fabian’s dreams are always
too big for reality. And it’s that sad fact that makes Windmark as Fabian so thoroughly
watchable and, yes, just a little, loveable. As Mary and even Helen perceive,
he’s not only a truly hard worker, but is an inveterate dreamer; if only he
could wrap his mind around a plausible and agreeable task! Unfortunately—or fortunately
for the sake of the movie—that’s out the question. And once Fabian wraps his
mind around a project, there’s little he won’t do to make it happen. That it’s
doomed is precisely what makes him so fascinating as a little man fighting
against all odds.
He mollifies Helen with a false permit.
But how is Fabian going to get around
Kristo? Well, he is clever, and having Kristo’s father in his pocket doesn’t
hurt. But Kristo still outwits Harry by forcing Nosseros to demand that he’ll
continue to support Fabian only if Nikolas wrestles a local figure, The
Strangler (Mike Mazurki) in the manner popular in his own rings. To win over
the purist Gregorius, he sets up The Strangler to bullying challenge Nikolas to
a fight. It works, and the fight is on.
Fabian knows the price he must now
pay—Kristo immediately offers a £1,000 bounty—and he is again on the run. This
time not only will no one help him, but all are ready to kill him or sell him
out. For a moment or two Fabian takes a rest in Figler’s place, only to realize
that the Beggar King has already made a call to Kristo: “How much you sellin’
me for?” he asks, on the verge of another breathless escape. Only the
blackmarket boat-residing Anna O’Leary is willing to let him rest for a few
moments before Mary, catching up with her lover, tries to intercede, insisting
that he needs to leave the city. A few minutes later, however, Kristo and his
gang have tracked him down, and, as Mary turns to leave, Fabian—who even now
cannot resist another scheme—shouts out against his former lover, blaming her
for his capture in the hopes that Kristo will award her the bounty money. Mary
drops to the sidewalk in despair; she has told him earlier in the movie that not
only is he killing himself, but killing her in the process. The Strangler grabs
the punk, and living up to his name, breaks his neck, tossing Fabian’s body
into the Thames— while Kristo stands on a high bridge above observing the final
crucifixion of the man who spent his own life trying to become somebody he
could never be.
A few scenes earlier, after discovering
Fabian’s treachery and being forced to return home to her husband, Helen
Nosseros discovers he has killed himself, leaving the club and his money to
Molly the Flower Seller (Ada Reeve). If she’s still standing, she is no more
alive, it is clear, than Fabian. This is a world that has no room for dreamers.
At least in Hollywood. Evidently the
ending in England was a bit more upbeat, so maybe there are still Fabian-like
figures haunting the foggy London alleys.
Los Angeles,
October 9, 2014
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