One of the brief periods when Hollywood tried to escape traditional patterns and allow some experimentation occurred immediately after the Second World War, although it was mainly limited to the realm of crime films. Together with the new style later known as “film noir” came a striving for maximum realism that made critics call these new Hollywood crime films “semi-documentary”.
One such work with the greatest imprint on popular culture in later decades was The Naked City, a 1948 film directed by Jules Dassin. The film was produced by Mark Hellinger, a former New York City newspaper reporter, who also serves as the film’s narrator. The plot takes place in New York City during six hot summer days and begins one night when a beautiful fashion model, Jean Dexter, gets chloroformed and later drowned in a bathtub by two men, one of whom would a few hours later get killed by his confederate after expressing feelings of guilt over his deed.
The crime is investigated by NYPD Lt. Dan Muldoon (played by Barry Fitzgerald), an old and experienced homicide detective who relies on a team of subordinates that includes young and novice detective Jimmy Halloran (played by Don Taylor). During their quest, they discover that the victim lived a fast life that apparently included an old “sugar daddy” and a possible affair with Frank Niles (played by Howard Duff), fiancé of her colleague and best friend Ruth Morrison (played by Dorothy Hart). When Niles gets exposed as a pathological liar and fraud, he becomes the obvious suspect, but the investigation also points to a string of jewel thefts that might connect the victim with both high society and the criminal underworld.
Hellinger shows that The Naked City will defy Hollywood conventions of its time at the very beginning, when it dispenses with opening credits (replaced by narration); credits are instead used at the very end, which would a few decades later become proper Hollywood convention. Much more interesting is the use of authentic New York locations, which include streets and scenes during which New Yorkers didn’t know that they were being filmed. The general plot is accompanied by small vignettes about various details of life in the big city and various ordinary characters whose presence sometimes serves as a sort of Greek chorus.
The realistic approach is, on the other hand, somewhat compromised by showing the private lives of the detectives, especially Halloran, whose picture-perfect family at times looks like the embodiment of the suburban utopia promoted in 1950s television sitcoms. The rest of the film is much darker and grittier, with the ultimate perpetrator being revealed late in the film and getting his comeuppance at the end of a spectacular chase scene on the Williamsburg Bridge.
The film is very confidently and economically directed by Jules Dassin, a director who was something of a film noir specialist before, as a suspected Communist, being forced into exile a few years later during McCarthyist persecutions and continuing a somewhat successful career in Europe. Dassin’s talent is well-matched by excellent black-and-white cinematography from William Daniels (who would be awarded an Oscar) and an effective musical score by Miklos Rozsa. The cast is also good, although veteran Irish actor Barry Fitzgerald seems a little bit overwhelming compared with his colleagues and he makes Don Taylor look bland.
Hellinger died of a heart attack a few months before the premiere and never saw The Naked City having success at the box office and among the critics. Its popularity a decade later led to an eponymous television series in which the roles of Muldoon and Halloran were played by John McIntire and James Franciscus. The series used Hellinger’s original closing words: “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This was one of them.” In 1998, HBO paid homage to the original with two cable films – Justice with the Bullet and A Killer Christmas – in which Muldoon and Halloran were played by Scott Glenn and Courtney B. Vance.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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