The Urban Labyrinth

 

         At the heart of  Night and the City is a master trope ; the urban labyrinth. Cities in film noir are not simply dangerous or bristling with iconographic menace - they are visualized as death traps, spaces from which there can be no escape. The common pattern finds summary expression in Dassin's film. Nearly every setting is crammed with architectural grids, frames, cul-de-sacs, narrow stairways, perspectives that choke off the mobility and freedom of human subjects.

In the Labyrinth
Paul Arthur
2015
Criterion.com

              https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/355-night-and-the-city-in-the-labyrinth?     srsltid=AfmBOoqzpUuVLRwYNKaXDWKugI5e0APPgv_AYGCFc-x5Nj882wYCQ1A7