Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950)
Warning: when blacklisted, better to become an export,
like a bottled beer. With a never-to-be-read novel tucked
under your belt. The point being there was no point.
The shadows, all too familiar. Urban sleaze slicing up
a foreign landscape where it's always night and the city
is still the city. This time a depleted London, where Dassin
is sent to recoup Zanuck's frozen profits. Shooting fast,
the most expensive scenes first, to keep the studio “on
the hook.” Harry Fabian, whether unlikeable corrupter
or fast-talking wide-boy, traipses through dark alleyways
and pocked bomb sites. There's rationing for everyone
save those who would follow the money. Kersh’s novel
bought, still unread, by Charles Feldman for $45,000,
then selling book and script to Zanuck for $175,000.
A tasty return, but, hey, turnarounds are what Hollywood's
all about. So long as one can milk the dregs: in this case,
Fabian, the Silver Fox and wrestling, punctuated by
dawn-and-dusk photography, and a litany of geo-exotica:
Soho’s Richmond Buildings, St Martin’s Lane and in-the-Field,
Waterloo Bridge, the Shot Tower, St Paul’s, Charing Cross
Road, Trafalgar Square, County Hall, Leicester Square’s
Cafe Anglais, and Hammersmith Bridge, where, a half-hour
of light, Dassin, using six cameras, completed twenty-two
shots in eighteen minutes.True to its title, though more
so had anyone been interested enough to read the novel.
like a bottled beer. With a never-to-be-read novel tucked
under your belt. The point being there was no point.
The shadows, all too familiar. Urban sleaze slicing up
a foreign landscape where it's always night and the city
is still the city. This time a depleted London, where Dassin
is sent to recoup Zanuck's frozen profits. Shooting fast,
the most expensive scenes first, to keep the studio “on
the hook.” Harry Fabian, whether unlikeable corrupter
or fast-talking wide-boy, traipses through dark alleyways
and pocked bomb sites. There's rationing for everyone
save those who would follow the money. Kersh’s novel
bought, still unread, by Charles Feldman for $45,000,
then selling book and script to Zanuck for $175,000.
A tasty return, but, hey, turnarounds are what Hollywood's
all about. So long as one can milk the dregs: in this case,
Fabian, the Silver Fox and wrestling, punctuated by
dawn-and-dusk photography, and a litany of geo-exotica:
Soho’s Richmond Buildings, St Martin’s Lane and in-the-Field,
Waterloo Bridge, the Shot Tower, St Paul’s, Charing Cross
Road, Trafalgar Square, County Hall, Leicester Square’s
Cafe Anglais, and Hammersmith Bridge, where, a half-hour
of light, Dassin, using six cameras, completed twenty-two
shots in eighteen minutes.True to its title, though more
so had anyone been interested enough to read the novel.
Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding, 1947)
Forget the reprobates, crawling parasites and fallen angels
who some say have flown too close to the ground. Only to
lose yourself amongst their wounded ilk: barkers, freaks,
dodgy mind-readers and cross-dressing shrinks. Each with
a sideshow of their own. No way out, other than to turn into
some ill-fated geek, down on his luck, his cage littered with
bottles of rot-gut, sleepless nights spent howling at the moon.
Gresham first heard about such creatures from Doc Faraday,
an ex-carny, who, like Gresham, had thrown in his lot with
the Lincoln Brigade. “I can’t understand how a man can get
that low,” says Stanton, as he takes another wrong road to
nowhere, reading the signs but never their significance.
How easy to fall, in an era before euphemisms became a
language spoken beyond the beyond. Back when cops still
smiled as their truncheons split skulls, owned or borrowed
by the discontented or dispossessed. So basic the desire for
a world of one's own. Can he hack geekdom? “I was born to
it,” Stanton declares. Words inked at the Dixie Hotel, Coney
Island, the missus in the arms of some high church author.
No passaran, though the darkness surrounds us, but no god-
damn big car for the effort. The rope breaks, but eventually
he's just another suicide statistic. As for Goulding, paranoid
the blacklist would come knocking, his peccadilloes revealed,
a studio mark, who would never again walk that razor's edge.
who some say have flown too close to the ground. Only to
lose yourself amongst their wounded ilk: barkers, freaks,
dodgy mind-readers and cross-dressing shrinks. Each with
a sideshow of their own. No way out, other than to turn into
some ill-fated geek, down on his luck, his cage littered with
bottles of rot-gut, sleepless nights spent howling at the moon.
Gresham first heard about such creatures from Doc Faraday,
an ex-carny, who, like Gresham, had thrown in his lot with
the Lincoln Brigade. “I can’t understand how a man can get
that low,” says Stanton, as he takes another wrong road to
nowhere, reading the signs but never their significance.
How easy to fall, in an era before euphemisms became a
language spoken beyond the beyond. Back when cops still
smiled as their truncheons split skulls, owned or borrowed
by the discontented or dispossessed. So basic the desire for
a world of one's own. Can he hack geekdom? “I was born to
it,” Stanton declares. Words inked at the Dixie Hotel, Coney
Island, the missus in the arms of some high church author.
No passaran, though the darkness surrounds us, but no god-
damn big car for the effort. The rope breaks, but eventually
he's just another suicide statistic. As for Goulding, paranoid
the blacklist would come knocking, his peccadilloes revealed,
a studio mark, who would never again walk that razor's edge.
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