“The Naked City” (1948)
Before getting inside the wrestling gyms of London in “Night and The City,” or taking to the lavish streets of Paris in “Rififi,” Dassin disrobed corruption on the streets of New York City. While his name might not flash the brightest amongst the most influential film noir and crime directors, Dassin’s “The Naked City” is the one and only exhibit needed to prove that he elevated the genre in his own way. Deeply impressed by the Italian neorealists, by the cinematic newsreel seen three years prior in Henry Hathaway‘s “House on 92nd Street,” and by New York photographer Weegee (nee Arthur Fellig), Dassin intertwined his film’s story with its setting in an explosive combo of styles to make the ‘Naked City’ itself a furiously compelling character. The film coaxes with its supremely effective semi-documentary approach as it peers into a handful of random lives among eight million New Yorkers, before it zeroes in on a murder of a girl. We follow Lieutenant Muldoon (a scene-stealing Barry Fitzgerald) and his unit as they search for her killer, before it ends on a thrillingly high note with a ravishing chase sequence. “The Naked City” is famous for being one of the first NY noirs shot entirely on location, but what’s even more fascinating is that Dassin filmed in public with hidden cameras in order to get the most authentic vibe possible. The birds-eye-view aerial shots, the sun setting under the Brooklyn Bridge, and those iconic Manhattan lights at night give the film a pulse “that never stops beating,” as our unnamed narrator, navigator and quasi-tour guide (Mark Hellinger) eloquently puts it. It went on to inspire a fantastically popular TV show of the same name, which ran from 1958-1963.
“Thieves’ Highway” (1949)
Say you were asked to name the first setting that comes to mind when you hear the phrase “film noir.” Metropolitan urban jungles, smoky bar rooms, dark alley ways… right? Sun-baked Fresno and its underworld of black market fruit produce would scarcely be on anyone’s mind, yet Dassin took A.I. Bezzerides‘ screenplay for “Thieves’ Highway” and made it glisten in the moonlight as a sensual film full of unexpected twists and turns, with all the allure and mercurial violence of the nittiest-grittiest film noirs. Ex-war vet Nick (Richard Conte) comes back home to a seemingly idyllic scene with his parents (Morris Carnovsky and Tamara Shayne) and soon-to-be wife Polly (Barbara Lawrence), but gets heartbroken when he learns how his father lost his legs in a trucking accident caused by shifty San Francisco produce peddler Mike Figlia (the peerless Lee J. Cobb). Forging an unlikely alliance with hardened truck-driver Ed (Millard Mitchell), who kept his father’s truck “together with spit” —a line so good, it’s used twice— Nick decides to unload an early harvest of Golden Delicious apples to Figlia, and to instill some justice. Plans are deliciously foiled once Italian vixen Rica (Dassin’s then-girlfriend Valentina Cortese) gets her “soft hands, sharp nails” on Nick. “Thieves’ Highway” provides doe-eyed Conte the perfect platform to balance melodramatic flair with short-fused temper, and the rest of the cast —Cobb, Mitchell, and Cortese especially— provide rock-solid support, but it’s really the unpredictable nature of the film that makes it one of Dassin’s most entertaining and very best. The breakdown of Nick’s truck that forms the bond between him and Ed; the exhilarating highway sequence when Ed’s truck fails him; Rica’s suspect luring of Nick; the bursts of humor from Figlia’s punchy one-liners: all these elements make “Thieves’ Highway” an immersive film that’s not unlike a gust of cool breeze on a hot summer’s day.
“Night And The City” (1950)
Made in the midst of his blacklisting ordeal (he’d been told by Darryl Zanuck that he was going to be prevented from working in the future, but that he still had time to fulfil his contractual obligation to 20th Century Fox: the director was unable to set foot on the studio property to finish the movie and didn’t oversee the scoring process), “Night & The City” aptly marks a midpoint in Dassin’s career, as both a Hollywood picture and the beginning of his European period. Based on a novel by Gerald Kersh (which Dassin confessed that he’d never read), it’s a rare example of a London-set noir, following Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark), a hard-nosed American ex-pat conman who starts a scheme to run the local wrestling scene with a veteran Greek brawler (Stanislaus Zbyszko), putting him head-to-head with the man’s son (Herbert Lom). It’s a pleasingly convoluted tale, with Widmark’s frantic, always-on-the-backfoot hero dashing through a London that’s rarely felt as maze-like as it does here. As with “The Naked City,” the film is as much a portrait of a place as of its main character, and it’s this seminal version of London that lingers most in the memory. Max Greene’s gorgeous chiaroscuro photography lends a moody, woozy poetry to an unglamorous side of the city, and Jo Eisinger (“Gilda”)’s script populates it with a host of deeply compelling characters, from Harry’s tragic, good-hearted girlfriend Mary (Gene Tierney, cast because Zanuck believed the actress was suicidal and would benefit from work), to part femme-fatale, part-innocent Helen (Googie Withers, star of the other great London crime pic of the period “It Always Rains On Sunday”). The noir nightmare that Dassin creates amounts to a vivid picture of post-war London, one of the toughest and most uncompromising studio films of the era, and arguably the director’s best work (Irwin Winkler’s 1992 remake isn’t bad either, featuring one of Robert De Niro’s most underrated turns).
