La cité sans voiles

In New York, the model Jean Dexter is found dead in the bathtub of her apartment apparently after committing suicide. However, the coroner concludes that she was actually murdered with a simulation of suicide. The experienced Homicide Lieutenant Detective Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) initiates his investigations with Detective Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor) and his team, and the prime suspect becomes Jean's friend Frank Niles (Howard Duff), who he an alibi but tells many lies in his statement.

The director Jules Dassin from the masterpiece "Du Rififi Chez Les Hommes" and "Night and the City" presents "The Naked City" totally filmed in locations of New York City and with actors interacting with common people on the streets like in the Italian Neo-Realism. The introduction is unique, with the credits narrated by the producer Mark Hellinger like in a documentary, and I do not recall any other movie with this characteristic. The screenplay discloses a great detective story, very well acted with Barry Fitzgerald playing a cynical and smart lieutenant and Don Taylor an inexperienced and family man detective. In the conclusion, the narrator tells that this is one of the 8,000,000 stories of the naked city, in a time where New York City had only this population (against more than 20 million inhabitants of the present days). My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Cidade Nua" ("Naked City")

Note: On 27 May 2016, I saw this film again.

This is a great Film Noir movie which I enjoyed very much. My favorite part is watching all the 100's of people on the streets on New York City not having a clue that the are immortalized in this motion picture. I love to freeze frame the street scenes and view how life was like in 1948. So many surprises, for example in the phone booth scene, notice the two men peering out the window in the store across the street. I think those guys were aware of the filming, but as the scene continued, they went back to serving their customers. Just plain magic. There is also a cool goof in this film. Note during the train station chase scene, just after Frank runs by, the director or a film crew member turns towards the camera and yells what I believe is "CUT"...So Fun....I'll see again and again and again!

Can film noir work in broad daylight - surely a contradiction in terms..? Well, here, it's attempted and largely pulled off by director Jules Dassin with a down-to-earth almost documentary realism which fully involves the viewer in the action as the well-known tag-line "1 of 8,000,000 stories" (the murder of a pretty female immigrant who's fallen into bad company and criminal habits) is played out over a three-day period in a sunny summery New York cityscape. William Daniels' excellent photography captures a city constantly on the move with its own citizens as accidental extras and actual locations as would-be film-sets. Just as effective is the natural vernacular dialogue with some great one-liners thrown in - none better than Barry Fitzgerald seemingly admiring the rear view of a retreating beautiful female suspect with the remark to a junior colleague "Beautiful long legs she has, wouldn't you say?" to which the underling readily concurs only for old pro Fitzgerald to snap "Keep them in sight for the next 48 hours!" detailing a tail on her. There's also another great scene where the murdered girl's mother berates to all and sundry her dead daughter for her reckless lifestyle and bringing of shame onto her family right up until she is taken to identify the corpse where she breaks down uncontrollably, her maternal feelings restored. The murder tale is slightly convoluted but reasonably easy to follow, no contrived clever-clever plotting here, just an everyday relatively uncomplicated murder, solved by routine police work which makes the headlines due to the beauty of the victim. There's close attention paid to forensics and even the insertion of scenes where perennial sad hoaxers come forward to either claim to solve the murder or even confess to it. The acting is mostly good, Fitzgerald is dapper and spot-on as the world-weary 'tec and his supporting officers all acquit themselves well too. The playing however of some of the criminals gets a little overwrought at times and jars the mood slightly. The film arrives at a reasonably exciting conclusion high above Williamsburg Bridge before the city goes back to sleep awaiting its next story... All done and dusted in 90 very watchable minutes, this is a very entertaining film-blanc I suppose you'd have to call it.

An unrealized project of Alfred Hitchcock's was to make a movie about 24 hours in the life of a great city, probably New York. Producer Mark Hellinger enlisted director Jules Dassin to attempt a similar stunt. The result was The Naked City, a slice-of-life police procedural that served as template for the popular television series a decade later. And while the movie is nowhere near the ground-breaking cinematic enterprise that Hellinger promises in his introduction and ceaseless voice-over narration, it's not negligible. With its huge cast (many of them recognizable, even in mute or walk-on roles) and pioneering location shooting on the sidewalks of New York during the sweltering summer of 1947, it nonetheless continues to satisfy. Its documentary aspect outlives its suspense plot.

It opens with two men chloroforming and then drowning a high-profile model in her city apartment (shades of I Wake Up Screaming and Laura). When her cleaning lady finds her next morning, it falls to Detective Lieutenant Barry Fitzgerald, with his heather-honey lilt, and his principal investigator, Don Taylor, to fit the pieces together. Soon into their web flits Howard Duff, an affable, educated loafer with no visible means of support who lies even when the truth would do him no harm. It seems he was on cozy terms with the deceased, even though he's engaged to one of her co-workers (Dorothy Hart). But although Duff's a poor excuse for a human being, nothing seems to stick to him, either. So the police slog on through the broiling day and soupy night, knocking on doors and flashing pictures of the dead girl. Their sleuthing takes them, and us, up and down the hierarchy of the city's eight million souls, from society dames and society doctors to street vendors and street crazies.

While the plot never rises out of the routine, these urban excursions give the movie its raffish texture – and remain one of its chief pleasures. This was New York in the dawn of its post-war effloresence, a city where it was still common practice to live comfortably on modest – average – wages. The gap between East Side apartments and Lower East Side walkups, with the bathtub in the kitchen, doesn't yet seem impossible to cross. And its inhabitants burst on camera with a welter of accents and attitudes. Hellinger and Dassin must have enlisted the services of every character-actor and bit-player in the Tri-State area, and film buffs will have a trivia tournament in trying to pick them out.

The Naked City ends with a chase over hot pavements and a stand-off high up on one of the bridges spanning the East River. It's a great set-piece, of the sort that action movies are all but required to include, but the movie's strength proves more subtle – it lies in its collection of sharply drawn vignettes (some of them, to be sure, little more than sentimental shtik). The Naked City is a rarity – a major production where the day players outshine the stars.

That's just what the producer, Mark Hellinger does. He tries to make it clear from the introduction that this is not your average movie. It is not. This entire production tries to accomplish one thing - authenticity. And for the most part, it succeeds.

Before I get to what's right about this movie, let me mention a few of the things that are wrong. Ted DeCorsia overacts. He always overacts. Howard Duff's character, Frankie Niles, is supposed to be a streetwise grifter. How the hell could he be dumb enough to get himself in as many pickles as he did. Anybody who has ever been around the block would know better than to lie to the cops about everything. Just lie about the important things and tell the truth when it won't hurt you. If this guy is a sociopath, he's the dumbest one in town. Although most of the accents are on the money, the incidental dialogue injected into some of the scenes sounds forced and phony. In fact, it sounds like Hollywood trying to sound like New York. Mark Hellinger's narration, by comparison, is not only authentic, it's practically Damon Runyonesque.

Now - what's right. Practically everything else. The location photography is the New York I remember as a kid. While I was watching some of the hot summer scenes downtown, I could practically smell the asphalt, melting tar, and garbage. Don Taylor's brick duplex in Queens was just the kind of house that every struggling family on the wrong side of Brooklyn aspired to.

I won't comment on the story except to say, it's an entirely believable crime story. I seem to remember Barry Fitzgerald playing a similar role in Union Station. Reminds one of the old days when most of the cops were Irish - and New York was really New York.