As it was opening this morning, I arrived at The Petit Majestic Bar in the still dark, predawn hours. The regulars were arriving by foot and bicycle over wet and gleaming streets that had just been washed down by the ever-vigilant municipal workers of Cannes — no dirty streets or dog feces over 24 hours old here!

To the accompaniment of – to me – mildly irritating French, hip-hop videos on a too large plasma screen, I ordered a delicious café au lait avec une croissant tres-fraiche – possible the best petit dejeuner in Cannes – and for the right price (they say)!

Pre-dawn Cannes.

As I was sitting at a table very nearly on the darkened street enjoying my first coffee, I thought about a time some years ago when I was searching these very back streets throughout much of a drunken night for cocaine. Back then “le drogue” was in fashion in North America and very much decried in Europe.

In many ways it was a sad and tumultuous time for me as I was given what would some would call golden opportunities that did not work out because of my substance abuse; these failures having given way to desperation and the blaming of others. However, that period of my life is long gone and from time to time, without regret, I look back, with humor, at some of the bizarre events that took place then.

One aspect of the life experience that always appealed to me at that time was that of the night! There was something mysterious and promising to the glistening pavements and the back alleys with their seared doorways that led to hotly imagined delights. The imagination was rarely rewarded, but, as the saying going, “it’s not the destination that counts, it’s the journey.”

These days, the night holds little interest and I often remark that if you don’t drink, there is very little to do after dark. But the struggle between “dark” and “light” is a fundamental reality for all humans – or, so it seems.

However, on the night of my search for drugs in Cannes, I was dressed to the nines in an “ice cream colored suit” and somewhere around 4:00am returned to my hotel quite beaten up, having been mugged.

I remember very little – just being approached by two or three tough looking guys for a prearranged rendezvous that began and ended, for me, with a fist in my face. The result was that I was without cash or credit cards and succeeded in terribly upsetting the concierge at my hotel – this type of thing doesn’t happen in Cannes after all! I was bleeding profusely and my specially-purchased Market suit was covered with blood. The accident was not reported to the police – and my colleagues were dismayed the next day at the sight of my split-lip and black eye but we all carried on; despite the fact that I purchased a very large switchblade the next vowing a revenge that, of course, was never to be. The switchblace itself resided upon my desk for many years in benign service as a letter-opener.

Reflections.

However, when recalling that night, this early morning, I was reminded of the relentless, Jules Dassin noir film “Night and the City,” wherein Richard Widmark as the soulless tout Harry Fabian is pursued to his death throughout the dark and rainy streets of London.

Movie Review:

Night and the City

Directed by Jules Dassin— 20th Century Fox 1950
Starring: Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Francis L. Sullivan, and Googie Withers

Described separately as a “textbook Noir film” and as “a bizarre Noir film”, it generally rates for most critics and film scholars as a better example of the genre and rates in the top echelon along with such other “noir” classics as “Kiss of Death”, “Out of the Past” and “Where Danger Lives”.

At the time of this movie’s release, I was very much taken with the acting and the “presence” of Richard Widmark. His blood-curdling giggle as the killer Tommy Udo in “Kiss of Death” was so memorable in this, his first screen appearance, that a group of us, at the time, young high-schoolers, raced around the halls and classrooms of Port Arthur Collegiate imitating it causing considerable disruption.

Harry Fabian in the "labyrinth."

In “Night and the City”, Widmark plays Harry Fabian, an American adventurer/conman in Europe. The entire film, with the exception of a scene or two, plays out at night in the Soho section of London where the battle scarred city landscape with its endless back alleys, cul-de-sacs and wartime ruins – are all gleaming with rain, dampness and a threatening “slick” look.

It is the labyrinth, where the minotaur or monster lies in wait for us – to destroy us and our dreams. Harry Fabian has little or no redeeming, human characteristics – always looking to score at someone else’s cost. He is described as “an artist without an art”, an ebullient and hardworking nightclub tout in an immediate, postwar London always searching for an angle amidst the denizens of this city of the night – a very dangerous place to be at all, let alone attempting to mastermind a con!

While Harry is no Ulysses searching for the Golden Fleece, he still says that “he wants to be somebody” and will do anything and use anybody to achieve this end. From the outset, it’s apparent that he will fail – the menace and the power of the labyrinth will consume him.

It’s difficult to identify with Harry Fabian, but, of course, we all yearn for something and are caught in our own sets of circumstances that threaten, and often destroy, these ambitions. So “Night and the City”, while playing more like a realistic nightmare than a story that we are invested in – no tears for Harry – we still can identify with the fact that there are dangerous and threatening forces that surround us too and fill us with anxiety and even dread.

Harry’s desperate attempt to escape his failure.

Harry’s final, desperate flight through a blasted landscape which is Bosch-like in its portrayal of London’s underbelly and its rogue inhabitants is chilling and masterful as “noir” filmmaking.

Harry dies amidst a spark of redemptive action but not enough that we really empathize; however, we’ve seen enough to feel that prowling the backstreets and alleys at night in any urban setting is a dangerous undertaking whether we have a purpose or not.

Dead.

“Night and the City” was made in London because Jules Dassin was about to be named by the McCarthy Committee so he was advised to get out of the country – the result is a curious, somewhat overwrought “noir” film set in a non-American environment, but well worth seeing for the acting alone as such fine British actors such as Francis L. Sullivan and Googie Withers were recruited.

At another time, we’ll talk about the Sir Carol Reed masterpiece, “The Third Man” as another European “film noir”, also featuring an American adventurer, Harry Lime played so wonderfully by Orson Welles.

As a final note, Fox thought enough of “Night and the City” to have it all digitally re-mastered and repackaged for the home market.

It’s a very good movie — I think much better than its 1992 remake with Robert DeNiro.