Night and the City

Unless you wish to walk the earth oblivious to the culture from which you came, Buzzine strongly recommends seeing the great film classics. Part of the reason they have been designated as “classic” is that their entertainment value has withstood the test of time. Buzzine literary editor Clare Elfman now presents a weekly column featuring a great film classic pick.

The early 1950s were glory years for the movies. Our brave boys were settling in after victory on the battlefields of WWII. My new husband had flown with the Thirsty Thirteenth and was ready to settle into domestic life in one of those little stucco California court apartments like the ones you see in the Bogart classic, The Big Sleep (the scene where the spoiled rich girl has been blackmailed by the bad guys). We had no cellphones, no Internet, a tiny TV which featured I Love Lucy, not much money as my husband struggled back to school… but boy did we have movies.

From those post-war years, three movies and three actors stay vivid in my mind. Three actors who made long careers–one in particular worked almost into this century and who was celebrated in a Turner Classic Movies presentation this last week.

He might not have had the name recognition of the first two: Marlon Brando in his heart-twisting role as the misguided kid brother of the union bum in On the Waterfront, and Humphrey Bogart as the scruffy, crude, unwashed captain of a broken down river barge in African Queen. This actor whose face is familiar yet you can´t quite place his name… tip of your tongue. The actor (once you see his performance in this great old classic pick of the week) is a name you won´t forget again: Richard Widmark.

Handsome in an offish sort of way. Sharp. Edgy, very edgy. In his first film, he played a homicidal maniac with a crazy high-pitched laugh who pushed a helpless old lady down the stairs. And so he became familiar in the role of the guy who was on the wrong side, who could be bought, who could be turned–a character just over-the-edge dangerous. In the featured Turner Classic film, he played the bad guy to hero Alvarez Kelly. William Holden was badly miscast in the title role, but as his opponent, Widmark played brilliantly as the guy fighting on the wrong side of the Civil War, the guy who had enough cruelty in him to shoot off Kelly´s finger to get what he wanted.

Audiences loved his off-the-edge brand of otherness. Once, he played the handsome lead in another Turner feature, Tunnel of Love, and his public would not have it. They wanted a touch of that high-pitched scary laughter, the touch of evil that lurked behind the boyish good looks.

The movie that Turner Classics did not play in its retrospective and homage to Richard Widmark, who died last week, is my recommendation. Get it at your own wonderful little hole-in-the- wall classic video store: Night and the City. Widmark plays Harry Fabian, who came from nothing and yearns to be someone. Yearns is a weak word for what his soul requires. He needs in order to survive, but he goes about that search scamming and mooching from women who want to help him. He´s a scammer, always on the edge of something… but a scam goes bad. To watch Harry find at last the one scheme that will make it for him… sorry, no more spoilers. Watch this excellent performance.

Unlike Brando, whose incomparable brilliance was extinguished by himself and ended up grotesquely; unlike Bogart whose brilliant young career made it to midlife with a touching performance in The Caine Mutiny and then died relatively young… the recognizable face but name on the tip of the tongue yet a name worth knowing–Richard Widmark worked for half a century.

And when you watch this heartbreaker of a thriller, remember the psychopath whose high-pitched giggle rose over the spectacle of an old lady´s wheelchair pushed down the stairs.

Richard Widmark, Night and the City (1950). This week´s pick.