Genre: Crime / Film-Noir / Sport / Thriller Director(s): Jules Dassin Release Date: 01 April 1950 Movie rating: 8.0

Director Jules Dassin’s 1950 film “Night and the City” stands as one of the cornerstones of the film noir genre. The first film he made after being exiled from the United States for alleged communist sympathies, it is bursting with bitterness, cynicism and despair. Even though it was initially misunderstood and shunned by the critics who were mostly concerned with its problematic moral stand, it was later lauded for its lack of sympathetic characters, its realism and its courage in depicting the lower parts of the society and its inhabitants of questionable ethics. The story, adapted from a Gerald Kersh novel, focuses on an ambitious small time hustler and con artist Harry Fabian, whose quasi-Machiavellian schemes always seem to come back to bite him on the behind. After his numerous unsuccessful attempts of climbing the underworld ranks, he believes that he now has a chance of a lifetime to strike it big. He comes up with a complicated scheme that, if successful, would allow him to run the professional wrestling game, currently run by underworld boss Kristo. His plan relies on him manipulating many moving parts to fall in accord with his desires, but his overconfidence just might land him into the biggest trouble he has ever faced.

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