Night and the City premiered in New York City on 9 June 1950.
Based on Gerald Kersh’s 1938 novel (which director Jules Dassin admitted he never bothered to read), Jo Eisinger’s adaptation presents Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) as more sympathetic than the novel, some of which Dassin rejected (changing the opening scene in Eisinger’s script).
Dassin was in the process of being blacklisted and producer Darryl Zanuck told the director to film the most expensive scenes first, to make it more difficult for the studio to remove him. Dassin was not allowed back on the studio lot to edit or oversee the musical score for the film (he communicated with editors Nick De Maggio and Sidney Stone and composer Franz Waxman by phone). After he was blacklisted, Dassin continued his career overseas.
The British version of the film is longer, has a more “upbeat” ending, and an entirely different musical score than the US version.
The film received mostly negative reviews (”little more than a melange of maggoty episodes having to do with the devious endeavors of a cheap London night-club tout to corner the wrestling racket“) and failed to find an audience at the box office, but its reputation began to improve in the 1960s, and Night and the City is now considered a classic film noir (”a work of emotional power and existential drama that stands as a paradigm of noir pathos and despair”).
