Monday 21 April 2014

Guardian article: Night and the City: Soho on celluloid

Night and the City, adapted from Gerald Kersh's novel, is the supreme example of London noir

Andrew Pulver revisits locations used in the classic British noir Night and the City Link to video: Night and the City: 'Brutal, bleak and beautiful'

The Guardian, Saturday 11 December 2010

It's the title that gets you first – so elemental and sinewy. In four short words it yokes together two key 20th-century fetishes: the black swamp of the night (with the moral terrors it summons up) and the concretised urban jungle that has taken on a brutal life of its own. As a pairing, it is definitively modern and anti-pastoral. And with the careful positioning of a definite article, it becomes a phrase of pure, hard poetry of authentically modernist intent. Would The Night and the City have worked so well? Or The Night and City? Or even City and the Night? No chance.

The writer who came up with it, Gerald Kersh, attached it to his third novel. Published in 1938, Night and the City is a high-minded pulp thriller containing a fantastically vivid creation: Soho pimp (or "ponce", as the term was then) Harry Fabian. A dapper dresser armed with a fake American accent, and a tenacious finagler in all corners of the W1 petty-crime universe, Fabian is arguably the most finely drawn sharp-suited hoodlum of inter-war England. (The main rivals? Graham Greene's Pinkie in Brighton Rock, or maybe James Curtis's Kennedy in The Gilt Kid.) And though it's never fully spelled out in Kersh's effusive prose, Fabian is an ethnically radical character too: with a name like that, we know he's supposed to be Jewish. But Fabian is a long way from the earnest, poverty-stricken, fresh-off-the-boat characters in books such as Israel Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto.

Fabian's background makes him a potent icon. From the 1880s, Soho had its own Jewish community – any aspiring protection-racketeer needed solid ethnic turf to prey on. (I know this because my grandfather Alf Pulver ran a tailor's workshop in Poland Street just after the war; his brother, Sid, commandeered a room for his unsuccessful bookie operation.) Fabian had plenty of real-life counterparts in the 1930s and 40s: street toughs like the Distelman brothers, Morris "Moishe Blue Boy" Goldstein, or Jack "Spot" Comer. By the end of the 40s, Comer could viably contend to be a major underworld figure as he "took over" the West End and carried out turf-war feuds with Italian roughnecks such as Albert Dimes. Earlier, at the turn of the century, Jewish Whitechapel had seen the gang known as the "Bessarabian Tigers", led by Max Moses aka Kid McCoy.

The novel was a great success and Kersh was fending off Hollywood even before it was published in America. (Simon & Schuster, delayed by the war, didn't put it out there until 1946.) The 1950 film that eventually emerged – set up by Darryl F Zanuck at 20th Century Fox, directed by McCarthy blacklistee Jules Dassin, led by Hollywood heavy Richard Widmark, and shot in London – is not the only noir made in Britain, but it's the only one in the high Hollywood manner, with its cinematic stylebook imported virtually in its entirety along with the director and leads.

Two distinct versions were completed: one for release in Britain and its empire, and one for the US and the rest of the world. Book and movie(s) don't bear a huge relation to each other, apart from Fabian and his predilection for bone-splintering wrestling promotions, but Night and the City is a kind of prism that refracts a number of fascinating subjects, including noir, British pulp cinema, communist crime novels and the mythology of Soho.

The film has suffered a shifting reputation, but its stature has grown sharply in recent years, thanks largely to the ascension of a new generation of cinematic tastemakers, led by the Coen brothers andQuentin Tarantino – a generation who prized pulp cinema (and novels) for their own sake. Both the Coens and Tarantino specialised in creating pastiche-oriented crime dramas that sparked scores of imitators, and simultaneously precipitated a shift in audience and critics' positions. In the UK we had our own watered-down version of this, with the 1998 success of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which triggered a nostalgic interest in British crime cinema. Lock, Stock is clearly less astute about its forebears than Reservoir Dogs or Miller's Crossing, but we have to give it its due in popularising previously little-regarded areas of British film.

Kersh's novel eventually joined other examples of "lowlife" writing in bargain bins across the land. Urban archaeologists and psychogeographers, however, never lost sight of it, and in recent yearsNight and the City has joined a flotilla of defiantly indigenous novels as a treasured, and marketable, corner of the cult publishing world. Kersh's current standing owes much to frequent mention in the work of Iain Sinclair, whose interest in east London novelists has led him naturally to Jewish writers such as Alexander Baron (The Lowlife), Emanuel Litvinoff (Journey Through a Small Planet) and Simon Blumenfeld (Jew Boy) and onwards towards Kersh. But Kersh is not of the school of Hackney and Bethnal Green, and Night and the City has little in common with other Jewish immigrant chronicles of rage and despair; it has much more affinity with British pulp literature of the 30s and 40s. James Curtis, Richard Llewellyn and Graham Greene in his "entertainment" phase are Kersh's closest cousins, delineating an argot-heavy world of petty crime, class conflict and bruising, street-smart morality. The novel becomes a gateway into that much-mythicised landscape of modern London: the Soho of sex shops and gang wars.

As John King, author of The Football Factory, puts it in the foreword to a recent edition of the novel: "Night and the City is set in the Soho of legend, itself a focus for the glitz of the West End. The book recreates a trail of pubs and clubs and Italian-run cafés from back in the days when a bowl of spaghetti was still exotic. Kersh knew this world and his sentences shine bright, his locations peopled by a nutty bunch of fluorescent characters with nuttier, more fluorescent names."

It is entirely fitting, then, that the film adaptation of Kersh's novel should go on to become the supreme example of London noir: nothing else comes close. Its genesis meant that it became the meeting-point of distinct cinematic pathways: the American studio system, the ideological crisis of the McCarthy blacklist, the British pulp-thriller tradition in both book and film, and the overarching influence of the wider film noir style. As a result, Night and the City is a cinematic hybrid of quite exceptional quality.

Night and the City by Andrew Pulver is published by BFI/Palgrave.

Film Noir of the week - Slatterys Hurricane

Slattery’s Hurricane (1949)

Noir … or Not?

Although it was made at the height Richard Widmark’s run of noir classics,Slattery’s Hurricane, produced in 1949 at his home studio, 20th Century–Fox, is never discussed as noir. In fact, it’s rarely discussed at all; it is perhaps the most unjustly neglected film in the oeuvre of Hollywood’s most unjustly neglected director, André de Toth.

Maybe it’s the elemental title; catastrophic weather conditions rarely figure in film noir. Maybe it’s the blindingly bright Miami and Caribbean locations. Maybe it’s the involvement of author Herman Wouk, so closely associated with military dramas such as The Caine Mutiny (1954) and The Winds of War (1983) (though he was also associated with such “civilian” works as Marjorie Morningstar [1958] and Youngblood Hawke [1964]), that makes people assume this will be yet another tale of men in uniform.

In fact, Slattery’s Hurricane fits snugly into the spate of postwar films, many of them noir, that focused on disillusioned veterans unable to adjust to civilian life. It may be the most provocative and challenging of the bunch. Like virtually all of de Toth’s films, it refuses to follow genre tropes. There are crimes and betrayals throughout, but no murderous conspiracies; the only death is from natural causes. But the characters, especially Widmark’s Will Slattery, are fully dimensional—tortured, tempted, ambitious, ambiguous, cowardly, and courageous. As de Toth might say, human.

Wouk’s 1947 novel Aurora Dawn, his first, earned immediate attention from 20th Century–Fox, who entertained the 32-year-old writer’s idea for a movie called Slattery’s Hurricane. He was asked to turn it into a treatment. Wouk came back with a complete novel (eventually published in 1956). Richard Murphy and an uncredited Buzz Bezzerides translated it to screenplay form.

Will Slattery is a hotshot fighter pilot reduced to inactive duty for defying orders in a crucial battle and recklessly engaging in a solo aerial dogfight. The stunt did help secure victory, and the brass has delayed a decision on whether he deserves the Medal of Honor . . . or a court-martial. In the meantime he’s taken a job piloting cargo flights in the Caribbean for a Miami-based “candy manufacturer,” a job arranged by his loyal girlfriend, Dolores (Veronica Lake).

It’s a mundane existence for the hot-blooded Slattery until the reappearance of old flame Aggie (Linda Darnell), who’s married to his war pal Hobbie (John Russell), who’s now assigned to the Navy weather squadron. When Slattery pursues Aggie, he sets off a chain reaction that ruins the lives of everyone, most tragically Dolores. Slattery seeks atonement—or suicide—by forcibly taking Hobbie’s place on a dangerous tracking flight into the eye of a hurricane bearing down on the Florida coast.

One suspects de Toth, a pilot himself, campaigned for this assignment. His flying sequences are superior to any other similar scenes from the era. The claustrophobic confines of the cockpit, its eggshell fragility in a storm, sudden shifts of light through the windshield—de Toth captures it all with stunning verisimilitude. His intercutting of stock flying footage with freshly shot sequences is seamless.

In true noir fashion, the story is recounted in flashback, with Slattery narrating his own bitter tale in a vituperative voice-over as his plane is battered by the fast-moving storm. It’s not exactly Double Indemnity (1944), but the device gives the narrative vital urgency. By opening with Slattery’s unexplained beating of his drunken friend and the theft of his plane, the story is given a suspenseful spine it wouldn't otherwise have, despite subplots involving adultery and drug smuggling, two noir staples.

The writers and director had running battles with the Production Code office over these elements of the story. The war was fresh enough in the public’s mind for the censors to fear sullying the reputation of the armed forces with the suggestion that a navy officer would sleep with a colleague’s wife. De Toth manages to avoid any explicitness while maintaining all the steaminess and sordidness of an affair enacted under the noses of the betrayed spouses.

The drug smuggling is dealt with just as obliquely, until it becomes essential to the plot. De Toth, thumbing his nose at “the Code,” makes the drug runners a pair of homosexuals, which slipped right under the censors’ radar. The most intriguing—and frustrating—aspect of the drug subplot concerns the strangely vague fate of Dolores. De Toth was married to Veronica Lake at the time and her casting has deep implications. For one, Lake was eager to break out of her established femme fatale persona. De Toth obliged by shearing off her patented peekaboo hairstyle and casting her against type in a role typically played by Barbara Bel Geddes: the mousy, left-behind girlfriend.

Second, it comes out that Dolores is a covert drug addict, and her response to Slattery’s infidelity is a dangerous abuse of her bosses’ product. Even though this is the crux of the story, the censors demanded that it be soft-pedaled. The only clue to Dolores’s problem is a hospital report Slattery peruses at her bedside, long enough for viewers to glimpse the words “Diagnosis: Pharmacopsychosis.”

De Toth was actually engaging in a form of shock therapy: Lake actually was a drug addict and alcoholic at the time. Slattery’s Hurricane would be the last Hollywood film she made. Her husband elicits a performance remarkably close to her true character, but it is a melancholy climax to her meteoric stardom.

Perhaps Slattery’s Hurricane would be better known—and considered more “noir”—if it had kept its original ending, in which Slattery relays the coordinates essential to saving Miami, but dies a martyr when he crashes into the sea. Dolores accepts his posthumous medal of honor, and only she and Aggie know that the “hero” was actually a selfish, drug-running rat bastard. Preview audiences hated the downer ending and Darryl Zanuck persuaded de Toth shoot a new one. (Imagine my excitement when earlier this year colleagues at the UCLA Film & Television Archive reported that they’d found “one extra reel” of Slattery’s Hurricane. Alas, it wasn’t the original ending, which sources at 20th Century–Fox say was probably not preserved.)

Although not as satisfyingly self-contained (nor as melodramatic) as the original, de Toth’s revised conclusion is wonderfully elliptical and open-ended, sharing the sad spirit of In a Lonely Place, made the following year.

written by Eddie Muller

http://www.noiroftheweek.com/2010/01/slatterys-hurricane-1949.html

Huff Post article, April 2 2008

John Farr

Writer, editor and lecturer on timeless film

Posted: April 2, 2008 07:02 AM

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Why Should Brad and Britney's Issues Dwarf the Legacy of Richard Widmark and Jules Dassin?

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Just this once, I'm going to bite (more like nip) the hand that publishes me, or more accurately, the fingers of those who contribute its content.

I was scanning the Huffington Entertainment page several days ago, looking for some interesting perspective on the life and work of actor Richard Widmark, who died last week at age 93. I saw an article on why Kate Hudson shouldn't wear wigs. I spied about three tedious looking pieces on Britney Spears (with one titled "I'm Britney's Neighbor, Bitch!") and a couple on Brad and Angelina's purported marriage.

I know entertainment is meant to be light and diverting, but inevitably it also mirrors the tastes and values of our time. Too much of what I observe these days feels like so much noise, signifying nothing -- or very little. Am I alone here, or do others feel it too?

And Huffington is nowhere near the worst offender in this respect. Just surf your 800 TV channels sometime, and look a bit more closely at what's on (besides John Adams and a few other solid series on HBO. Is this where all the good writers went?)

Just why does the media business have to promulgate so blatantly what's become a junk-food culture? Why, in the face of rampant over-consumption as well as hazards both environmental and economic, do we remain so mired in sensationalism and the superficial?

Certainly the phenomenon of tabloid journalism is nothing new, but in the past, it was relegated to its own spot on the media landscape, available to those vapid or salacious enough to want to go there.

Now it feels pervasive. And it's not just adults affected by this tripe; it's our children.

So, in between articles on the seamy Pellicano trial and the "troubled" Amy Winehouse on Huffington, I find precisely one piece on Richard Widmark, a short but sweet one by Kim Morgan, which passed like a tiny ship in the night, eliciting all of nine comments.

Richard Widmark should not be treated as a footnote in movie history. He merits greater respect and attention than that.

I'm betting that the growth of home-based viewing and on-demand technology will soon create more of a meritocracy of content, giving smart consumers easier access to quality viewing choices.

In the realm of film, this will open a world of possibility in the realm of independent, foreign, and yes- classic American cinema -- areas which too often get overlooked, due to the disproportionate promotion and distribution clout placed behind the latest Will Ferrell or Owen Wilson vehicle.

I fervently look forward to the day when a movie viewer's question will not be "What's out?" or "What's on?", but rather, "What's great?"

But let's return to our forgotten hero, Richard Widmark. True, he was not a leading man in the league of a Gable, Brando or Clooney. He was never a comic lead, and rarely a romantic one. His particular beat was film noir, Westerns, and drama. Yet whatever movie he was in, he projected a unique quality, an innocent smirk that could spell death, either for him or someone else.

So, why so little coverage on the passing of this talented and distinctive film actor, and so much (literally) on bloated Jack Nicholson's sagging breasts? (That bare-chested picture of him three days ago was truly unfortunate. Give the guy a break -- he's 70 and on vacation!)

I suppose Widmark's publicity value declines because he's been out of the scene for so long (we're always so focused on the "now", aren't we?) but also since off-set, he was a forthright man who led a relatively normal life, managing (unlike a Sean Penn or Russell Crowe) to shy away from the spotlight and avoid public scuffles and fisticuffs with those predictably omnipresent paparazzi.

As some of you know, Widmark started out in radio (clearly he had the voice), then became a bankable star virtually overnight playing sadistic, baby-faced killer Tommy Udo in Henry Hathaway's quintessential noir thriller, Kiss of Death (1947), an entry which we should all experience or re-visit. Though in support of protagonist Victor Mature, Widmark clearly stole the picture, and his career went into overdrive.

But in the whirlwind of sudden fame, Widmark was determined not to play the Hollywood game by its well-established rules. It seems he knew he had talent, and with a studio contract, would get work. So he lived quietly on a horse ranch well north of Los Angeles for much of his career, periodically commuting east to a second home in Roxbury, Connecticut, where he ended up retiring and leading land conservation efforts there for years.

He was married to one woman for over half a century. When she died, he re-married Henry Fonda's former spouse. (The two actors had actually worked together several times, in good -- not great -- features: namely, Warlock (1959), How The West Was Won (1963), andMadigan (1968).)

In all, notwithstanding his early gangster roles, it appears the real Richard Widmark was a more civil person from a more civil time. He craved privacy, and he found it.

Not that he minced words. In his New York Times obit, I was struck by this scathing quote from a 1995 interview with Britain's The Guardian: "The businessmen who run Hollywood today have no self-respect. What interests them is not movies but the bottom-line. Look atDumb and Dumber, which turns idiocy into something positive, or Forrest Gump, a hymn to stupidity. 'Intellectual' has become a dirty word."

I think Mr. Widmark made a valid point, one that only seems truer today, and that also gets at the heart of my earlier lament. Our culture shows and talks about whatever sells, however banal. We just don't like to admit it much.

There have been, and will be more, "best of Widmark lists", I trust. But I wanted to give you my own.

First, to cement his bad guy credentials after his breakthrough screen role, Widmark played slick, nasty crime lord Alec Stiles in The Street With No Name (1948), a trim murder/heist thriller featuring a solid Lloyd Nolan as a G-Man hot on Stiles's trail.

His next notable 40s film was veteran director William Wellman's Yellow Sky (1948), Widmark's first Western, where he portrays a gold-hungry bandit opposite Gregory Peck's robber reformed by love, in the shapely form of a tomboy-ish Anne Baxter, who's perfectly comfortable using a gun. Street and Sky are heartily endorsed, particularly for dyed-in-the-wool fans of their respective genres.

The actor's most enduring work would then unfold over the following decade, as he extended his versatility by mixing in sympathetic roles with his trademark villains.

Night And The City (1950) -- In post-war London, small-time hustler Harry Fabian (Widmark) ekes out an existence steering customers to the Silver Fox, a sleazy nightclub owned by the oily, obese Phil Nosseross ( Francis L. Sullivan). Wily and manipulative in his unquenchable drive to advance his fortunes via various shady schemes , Harry even stoops to stealing from his devoted singer-girlfriend, Mary (Gene Tierney). He finally gets his chance at the big time when he cons retired Greco- Roman wrestling star Gregorius (Stanislaus Zbysko) into a new promotional scheme, only to face the wrath of Gregorius's well-connected and dangerous son, Kristo (a young Herbert Lom, later Chief Inspector Dreyfus in the Pink Panther series). The noirish name of Jules Dassin's classic thriller says it all: Widmark, here in the role of penny-ante loser more than hardened criminal, manages to be at once hateful and pathetic as conniver Fabian, running through dark, dank back alleys to flee those he's fleeced. Lom and Sullivan are also stellar as the underworld kingpins he inevitably stings -- and who mete out punishment accordingly. Vivid camerawork, frenetic pacing, and a palpable sense of anxiety drive Dassin's final, pre-blacklist Hollywood picture to a heart-pounding finish.

Side note: in one of those weird coincidences of life and death, Dassin, who was actually an American citizen, just passed away at 96, within a week of Widmark's own death. He made some top noirs stateside -- check out Brute Force (1947) and Naked City (1948) -- followed by more great work overseas, after the blacklist forced him out of the country- notably two first-rate vehicles with his real-life spouse, Greek actress Melina Mercouri: Never On Sunday (1960), for which both husband and wife were Oscar-nominated, and the breezy, scenic heist spoof, Topkapi (1964).

And here's another reason to bemoan the shameful chapter of McCarthyism: arguably the best noir film ever, Rififi (1955), directed by Dassin, was shot in France!

Meanwhile, the quintessentially American Richard Widmark remained in this country and continued building his career with the following films:

Panic In The Streets (1950) -- Early Elia Kazan suspenser centers around an increasingly desperate search for two criminals on the lam in New Orleans (played by Jack Palance and Zero Mostel!), who, unbeknownst to them, have been infested with Bubonic plague. If health inspector Dr. Clint Reed (Widmark) and police captain Tom Warren (Paul Douglas) don't nab their quarry fast, this killer plague will spread and put the whole country at risk. Breathlessly exciting film is one of the best manhunt pictures ever made, with the plague twist adding an extra jolt of tension. Kazan's peerless on-location shooting never obscures the terrific acting from the four central characters, comprising both hunters and hunted. Featuring one of Widmark's first "good guy" roles, Panic remains unmissable.

No Way Out (1950) -- Wounded mobster Ray Biddle (Widmark) is brought to a police hospital along with his brother George, where they are treated by Dr. Luther Brooks (a young Sidney Poitier), a black M.D. whom Ray heckles with racist diatribe. When George dies, Ray blames Brooks, and begins a campaign of hate that boils over into the city's black community. A tense, hard-hitting social drama that earned an Oscar for Best Screenplay in 1950, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's pioneering film looks squarely at the ramifications of racism while keeping audiences on edge. Poitier is magnificent in his debut role, the epitome of cool-headedness and quiet self-regard, while Widmark seethes in a typically explosive role. Suspense builds inside and outside the hospital, and the effect is riveting. Keep an eye out for actors/civil-rights activists Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, playing Luther's brother and sister-in-law in a tandem debut. A potent powder keg of a film that hasn't lost its bite-or its relevance.

Pick Up On South Street (1953) -- Small-time grifter and pickpocket Skip McCoy (Widmark) gets more than he bargained for when he picks the purse of beautiful but naïve courier Candy (Jean Peters). It turns out the purse carries microfilm with top-secret information being sold to Communist spies. Soon Skip and Candy are enmeshed in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse, involving the New York police, the feds, and the spies themselves. Question is, will the pair live long enough to explore their growing mutual attraction? Idiosyncratic director Samuel Fuller's most successful film is prime noir with priceless tough guy patter emanating from the scummy Skip. And Peters makes for one sultry femme fatale. On-location shooting in lower Manhattan adds an authentic feel, and the premise itself is a cut above most standard crime stories. Beyond the espionage yarn, the audience yearns to know whether Skip, seemingly a man with no conscience, can develop one under extraordinary circumstances. Widmark shines, as does peerless character actress Thelma Ritter playing Jo, a veteran stoolie.

Broken Lance (1954) -- Tough Irish-American rancher Matt Devereaux (Spencer Tracy) is used to doing things his way, and has raised his four sons with the same work ethic that helped him build his empire. But his eldest, Ben (Widmark), resents being paid and treated like a hired hand, leaving half-breed Joe (Robert Wagner), Matt's youngest heir and favorite, to play the role of family peacemaker. These familial tensions boil over when Matt takes on a copper-mine owner who's polluting his feeding stream. Unraveling its Shakespearean yarn in one long, extended flashback, Edward Dmytryk's engaging, visually sumptuous Western, written for the screen by Oscar winner Philip Yordan, tackles the age-old theme of father-son friction with remarkable freshness. Tracy dominates as Devereaux, infusing his cattle tyrant with all the bull-headed blindness of King Lear. Wagner and Widmark are respectively compelling as the good son and his bitter, calculating older brother, but it was Katy Jurado who earned an Oscar nod playing Matt's Native American wife. Thanks to brisk pacing and boldly drawn characters, "Lance" really hits the mark for Western fans.

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) -- This recounting of the famous Nuremberg trials centers on Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy again), sent to Germany as chief Allied judge. Prosecutor Tad Lawson (Widmark) is assigned to try a group of top-level Nazis for complying with Hitler's inhumane edicts, facing off against defense attorney Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell). As Haywood presides, he ponders where the nation went wrong, and how to apportion blame. Long but brilliant, Judgment was a box-office sensation, due to director Stanley Kramer's sensitive, socially conscious approach, which examines the degree to which people should be held responsible for following orders. The movie includes a host of sterling performances: Schell stands out as the impassioned defense attorney (he earned an Oscar), as do Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland, whose tragic characters poignantly reflect the sadness in their real lives. And within this maelstrom of mind-blowing dramatic turns, an assured, steady Widmark underplays his pivotal character beautifully. "Judgment" is an absorbing, true-to-life reckoning with the infamous Nazi legacy and the nature of modern justice.

The Bedford Incident (1965) -- Reporter Ben Munceford (Sidney Poitier, by now a full-fledged star) boards a navy ship patrolling off the coast of Greenland to observe the crew's maneuvers and profile their hardened, aggressive commander, Captain Eric Finlander (Widmark). But Finlander, a zealous anti-communist, is intent only on hunting a Russian nuclear sub he knows to be in the area, ultimately driving his crew past the point of no return. This taut Cold War thriller re-teamed Poitier with Widmark after a fifteen year hiatus. Widmark is chilling as the remote, obsessive commander, while Poitier subtly portrays an astute journalist tracking developments with mounting uneasiness, as he observes the steady unraveling of an officer who holds many lives in his hands. Don't miss this nerve-jangling, no-frills, psychological drama, with Widmark's considerable acting chops on full and frightening display.

Now -- let's see how much play the life of Jules Dassin gets, on Huffington and elsewhere.Rififi, anyone?

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12 people are discussing this article with 12 comments

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smzzzz

2 Fans

Bravo for this piece. Widmark didn't play the Hollywood game and didn't do interviews but he was every bit the icon that John Wayne was, but in a much deeper way. He was also thoughtful and well-read. Sadly, the same can be said for many brilliant people in the public eye who get ignored by our dumbed-down culture.

2 APR 2008 7:30 PM

Patrick O. (coolsilverfoxx)

1 Fan

Right on target as usual, Mr. Farr.

Scrolling through these tawdry infotainment stories about current tabloid personalities, then reading/viewing appreciations like yours of Widmark is like going down a line of a variety cheap glassware or plastic , tapping them with a spoon, hearing the various dull pings ...until....you hit that one glass of pure crystal....that sound of quality....ah! The real thing.

As I follow your ongoing blog here on HUFF I'm really gaining a gratitude for the "crystal pings" you strike in your advocacy of older, classic films, as well as for your own taste in these matters.

What a refreshment to recall actors who were willing to portray "heavys", villians, in Widmark's case, practically for his whole career. Yet I gather he was a very nice guy, a civilized gentleman, of taste. That he picked up and left Hollywood for Roxbury Conn to live the latter` part of his life tells the story.

Who else now is unafraid to consistantly play heavys? Buscemi? Oldman? Close? Who am I leaving out?

Keep it comin', John.

2 APR 2008 9:36 PM

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fdediant

0 Fans

Frustrating, isn't it?

It Richard Widmark for heavens sakes! I watched the news here in the UK and he barely got a mention. The world has gone mad, very mad. An outstanding actor.

2 APR 2008 3:18 PM

Kenton Campbell (kcampbell)

SUPER USER·103 Fans·Laryngitis for a generation

Bravo, sir.

2 APR 2008 7:05 PM

OttoMann

9 Fans

One more comment (assuming my first one actually appears): Case in point -- the top three stories heading the Entertainment page of Huff Post deals with 1) Katie Holmes gets a "Tom Cruise haircut"; 2) Jay Z and Beyonce apply for a marriage license; 3) the American Beauty actress "rocks a thong."

Wow, I'm so up now on the latest happenin' buzz. I feel so informed and enlightened.

2 APR 2008 1:30 PM

MA C. (cinemaven)

SUPER USER·1,079 Fans·Follow me on Twitter :)

I missed any commentary on Widmark's passing and this was the first I'd heard of it.

He was a powerful actor who owned the screen when he was on it. In No Way Out, his stunning performance was equally hard to watch because he allowed himself to portray someone who was such an ugly character that you couldn`t help but hate him.

I was watching African Queen this morning and thinking that it could never be made today. A slow paced character piece wouldn`t survive alongside shoot em ups and car crashes that have become so necessary for box office. No Way Out is also a film that couldn`t be made today. It`s so raw and powerful but the language and anger would not be politically correct and some of the most significant dialogue wouldn`t make it past the censors. If it was remade, Widmark`s character would probably find redemption in the end....

2 APR 2008 7:19 PM

3fingerbrown

751 Fans

As one of the Widmark 9 (those who commented on Kim Morgan's appreciation of the actor), you know I'm a big Widmark fan. And I agree entirely in principal with Farr's thoughtful post. Yet, it's unreasonable to think that readers should've made more of a to-do over his death.

Widmark was an acquired taste, the kind of actor who, after his initial burst of fame in the 1950s, was loved more by aficionados than by the popcorn-munching public. Just look at the list of Widmark's great performances Farr provides. Excellent choices all, but, with the possible exception of "Nuremberg," they are films that have been highly influential among film professionals, beloved by film buffs and critics, but widely unknown by today's general audience. There's no "Casablanca" or "All About Eve" or "North By Northwest" in his filmography--the kind of universally loved films that've never gone out of style or out of circulation.

As big a fan as I am of the man, it didn't surprise me that the announcement of Widmark's death was greeted with a national "Richard who?"

2 APR 2008 8:30 PM

Shaddup

87 Fans

It's a shame this fine actor wasn't recognized more both during and after his lifetime, and I think you made a great point. Widmark was never in the huge hollywood blockbuster that gets drummed into the public consciousness. Rather he also probably didn't get as much recognition because he was so fine an actor, and he portrayed a lot of people that most of us might not want to know. However those of us who love film noir and actually study film will always hold him in high regard.

3 APR 2008 3:47 AM

Annoula

934 Fans·Enough about me!

Considering that Jules Dassin was blacklisted during the "first" McCarthy era (we are now living the second) as well as the fact that his wife, Melina Mercouri had a big influence in all the Greek women, regardless of their generation, the least that Arianna could do is pay the due tribute to the life and talents of Jules Dassin, who aside from dying in Athens and calling himself "more Greek than most Greeks", has been an example of FEARLESSNESS to all Americans.

2 APR 2008 11:39 PM

JerryColana

1 Fan

Richard Widmark was a great asset to any production because he knew his work well. He also taught acting at the college level in the late 1930's at his Alma matter; Lake Forest. Here's a fun sketch from
another time; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mrt5rJLvTw&feature=related

3 APR 2008 3:01 PM

TRYKER

258 Fans

There was no one better at that sly smirk he could do that said so-o-o-o much. I can still see his face...and surely adored him. Good work.

4 APR 2008 12:00 AM

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