Night and the City (1950) is a classic film noir, the story of a hoodlum on the make in post-war London. Adapted from a novel by Gerald Kersh, directed by Jules Dassin, it starred Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Googie Withers and Herbert Lom. Andrew Pulver's study of the film argues that it is the most important noir film made in the UK, offering a distinctively British twist on the classic noir themes of ambition, avarice and betrayal. In an original and insightful discussion, Pulver traces the film's development and production history, and its reception by British and American critics. He considers the film both as an example of British film noir, which was heavily influenced by the constricting social mores of the interwar years and the shattering effects of World War II, but also as a hybrid of contrasting American and European noir traditions, and explores how the film's score and editing differed in the British and American versions.
Finally, he explores the film's representations of the dark underworld of London's Soho, at once the city's entertainment area, but also containing a subterranean life of criminality, prostitution and menace, and reflects upon its contribution to a long history of mythologising of this ever-shifting urban landscape.
