This movie has been widely praised as a “masterpiece” of the film noir genre. How it has earned that reputation is hard to imagine, because it is actually no more than a cheap melodrama, and far inferior to the best noir films except in one respect. Set in London, it is the story of Harry Fabian, a “nightclub tout” played by Richard Widmark, and his doomed quest to get rich quick. He earns a precarious living conning tourists into visiting The Silver Fox nightclub, where his girlfriend, Mary, played by Gene Tierney, is a hostess. She having saved up her pennies, Fabian tries to inveigle her into funding his hare-brained schemes. She urges him instead to try a get-rich-slowly scheme, like a grocery store or tobacconist, which she would willingly invest in, but he, intent on making it big and fast, is contemptuous of such humdrum dreams. One night while trying unsuccessfully to talk a party of tourists into the nightclub he stumbles on a new idea: to make a fortune as a promoter of wrestling. Through Fabian Promotions he is going, he proclaims grandiosely, “to control wrestling in London”. There is a considerable obstacle to this plan in the form of gangster Hermes Kristo, played with a formidable aura of dead-eyed cross-me-at-your-peril by the young Herbert Lom, and who really does control wrestling in London and who clearly will not shrink from eliminating potential competitors by whatever means necessary.

Harry tries every contact he knows to raise money for his new venture, but they have all been far too over-exposed to his hype to swallow this latest pitch. Phil, the ageing, overweight owner of The Silver Fox is among those who turn him down. Egged on by his younger wife, Helen, however, Phil finally agrees that if Harry can raise half the money elsewhere he will match it. Helen has the hots for Harry, and, besides, would like to escape her inexorably jealous husband, who gives her lavish gifts but, presumably because he’s (justifiably) afraid she’ll run off, keeps her on a tight leash cashwise. Helen sells a fur coat and gives Harry the money he needs. But Phil is on to her. He comes up with a plan. He gives Harry the money, which is the final push Harry needs to fulfill his destiny. His destiny, needless to say, is not the “life of ease and plenty” he had envisaged for himself.

The main problem with the story is that there is nothing in Harry Fabian to evoke any kind of sympathy from an audience. He has the drive, ambition and nerve of the cliché American go-getter (in the original novel he is a cockney who affects an American accent), but he’s completely without charm. He clearly doesn’t have any regard for Gene Tierney except as a source of cash, and it’s a total mystery why she should be so abidingly in love with him, because he has nothing beyond Richard Widmark’s good looks to recommend him. This is what is meant by “melodrama”: the audience is expected to believe that this woman, perceptive enough to see the flaws in his business schemes, can’t also see that he’s a shallow, charmless scoundrel who doesn’t give a damn about anyone except himself. You are supposed to believe the “woman in love” trope but are provided with absolutely no basis to make it credible. Every other relationship in the movie – Phil and Helen, for example – is similarly a familiar trope empty of any supporting substance. None of the characters are believable. The attempts of the soundtrack to give some credibility border on comical.

The movie does have two redeeming features. The wrestling scenes, performed by actors who were actually professional wrestlers, are excellent. Then there is the cinematography. The film, released in 1950 in black and white, is filled with beautifully evocative images of rickety post-war London, its crumbling walls, its dirt and seedy backstreets perfectly suited to the genre. The costumes are also great, and the sight of Richard Widmark in his sharp shouldered double-breasted suit and fedora sprinting desperately up and down the streets and bridges of the city in his final moments is worthy of a Frank Miller comic at its graphic chiaroscuro best. Noir indeed. The cinematographer, Max Greene (nee Mutz Greenbaum), was a German with a career going back to the silent era, latterly mostly in British films. Hats off to him.