Night and the City

Andrew Pulver’s study of Night and the City argues that it is one of the most important noir films ever made. Drawing from biographies, journals and interviews, Pulver traces the film’s development and production history and its reception by British and American critics, considering the film both as an example of British film noir—which was heavily influenced by the constricting social mores of the interwar years and the shattering effects of WWII—and also as a hybrid of contrasting American and European noir traditions. Finally, Pulver explores the film’s representations of the dark underworld of London’s Soho, at once the city’s entertainment area, but also containing a subterranean life of criminality, prostitution and menace, and reflects upon its contribution to a long history of mythologising of this ever-shifting urban landscape.