The Naked City Reviews

Crazy cool Weegee-esque 1947 New York exteriors. This movie begins where most film noirs end. Slightly humdrum police procedural but at the time it was a real breakthrough, since imitated by Dragnet and a hundred Jerry Bruckheimer TV shows. There are eight million stories in the naked city and this one ends with a stunning chase sequence on the Williamsburg Bridge.

Another in a long line of detective films, I can't justifiably call this a noir by any means. Sure, it's certainly gritty and calls upon the same course set of circumstances to show the story, but has none of the dire aspects of noir. Instead of a larger than life language, the detectives all exhibit their own ways, and realism is embedded in every part of this film. This was shot in New York City, and never on sets or lots. It was shot in apartments, on streets and subway tracks, a fact that the narrator of the film proclaims at the start of the film. Besides the fact that this film follows the investigation of a murdered girl, it also takes a quick look into the lives of residents of the city. It's not exactly a love letter to New York, or a condemnation of the many lurid lives that go on during the rush of traffic and the investigations of the police, but it is a wide scope. Throughout a strange kind of narration dubs voices, and fills in the blanks where need be. The story is that of a model who is chloroformed and drowned in her bathtub. Surprisingly the crime itself was showed, and it was amazingly graphic. The look of the film is sleek, shady, and seductively black and white. The actual detectives on the case are varied and at times awkward, but in a good way. The lead detective (Barry Fitzgerald) shows both his professional side as well as his ability to give lessons to beat cop Det. Halloran (Don Taylor). Of all the roles of this film, nothing is dopey except for Halloran, who has playful fights with his wife, lives in Jackson Heights, and is always smiling that same big eared smile throughout the entire film. The plot isn't overly dramatic or contrived in any way, but it's the way it's told, the characters behind the murder that really hold this high in people's mind. My favorite character is the crook Niles (Howard Duff) who lies to everyone, even his fiancee and the cops. He is charismatic, deceitful, and not too bright, but you only feel horror at the depths at which he sinks. It's truly a classic, mostly looking like a documentary about New York at the time, and it would be a shame if you missed it.

A distant procedural that confirms our worst fears: that committing a murder is as commonplace as going to work in the Big Apple. Right from it's unconventional opening, one gets the sense that this isn't your average noir.
From there director Jules Dassin treats the viewer to shots of workers trudging along in their daily grind. Some going to their factories, some at their desk, some participating in a brutal slaying. It's just clockwork. Like a job, murder is just part of some people's routine. The near banality of the crime is aided by a candid and temperate narrator who is our guide in this lurid tale. He seems to take pleasure in informing the audience that this isn't a basic studio picture. That it is shot on location, as close to reality as it gets. This even-keel approach gives the feeling like this is something he has seen 1,000 times. That in a city of 8,000, sometimes pill-popping power-hungry women get offed. That is just the way it is.
Dassin also taps into the thoughts of the residents of the city. No matter how innocent, hedonistic, or sadistic, they are treated equally. Connected by this city, for better or for worse.
Pre-dating Scorsese and Allen, who are famous for using the city as a character in the story, Dassin also gives the city a prominent role here. From the opening with the Empire States Building, to the parents angrily-sobbing over how their choices may have lead to an untimely death with the Brooklyn Bridge looming in the background, to the breathtaking ending on said bridge, the city seems to have a distinct impact on everyone's actions. In a way, it seems to be the main character.
As one can see this isn't your average noir. Dassin, who would later have a rather tumultuous relationship with Hollywood, takes a lot of chances here and crafts one of the more unique noirs that I have seen.

Frank Niles might be one of the dumbest "conmen" to ever grace the silver screen. He's a horrible, unconvincing liar who is caught almost instantly in every lie he tells. It's a shame he has to run up against lieutenant Muldoon and Detective Halloran. Muldoon is a cool character. An irish cop with decades of experience, he breaks down the stories of big liars like Niles like crackers in soup. It seems a model has been murdered, and there's a matter of a stolen box of jewelry from the dead woman's apartment. It adds up to a ring of conspiracy and the hunt for a harmonica-playing wrestler. And dumb Niles with his cheap alibies is right in the middle of it.

As the film opens, narrator Mark Hellinger tells us this film is unlike any we have ever seen. Not shot on a studio sound stage or back lot, The Naked City was filmed on the actual streets of New York City. As good as it sounds on paper, 1948 microphones and recording equipment had difficulty picking up the actors' lines over the noise of the busy city streets. The easy solution, in addition to doing overdubs later in the studio, was to have a narration. This gives the film a certain aire of authenticity (it's been called a "semi-documentary"). There is a gritty realism on display here that one doesn't normally find in the noir films of this period (I wonder just how influential this film was to Jack Webb when he was creating the "Dragnet" series).

The Naked City is almost enough to piss off the Pope the first time you see it. Producer Mark Hellinger's narration starts off as an unexpected treat (spoken credits instead of a formulaic title sequence? I'm there!) but overstays its welcome & leaves you looking for his Off button. Throw in some odd and random voiceovers for supposed atmosphere and you've got a disorienting and welcome opening 20 minutes. Once you get past that and Barry Fitzgerald as a human caricature The Naked City becomes a beautifully photographed and very well-directed detective story with sporadic film noir moments and a great ending. This movie might seem a little hokey by today's standards, but that's only because it's been ripped off mercilessly for the last 2/3 of a century.

A pretty young dress model turns up face down in her own bathtub while her best friend's fiancé is busy unloading a passel of stolen jewelry.

8 million stories in the naked city. This is one of them.

A good detective mystery movie, I liked it.

The research librarian in me loves this procedural drama about a the murder of a party girl and the steps the police go through to solve the case. Some people made find it too slow, but for detail-oriented folks like me, it's a treat.

A good movie but I expected more

excellent! great street scenes of 40's new york, many shot with hidden camera. the narration gets a bit silly and barry fitzgerald is kind of odd but dassin compensates with an awesome climactic chase on the williamsburg bridge! a huge influence on tv police dramas. 8 million stories...

"the naked city" is a story about one gorgeous blonde murdered in her own bathtube that triggers the police force doing the hide-and-seek of all the suspects involved, narrated in first-person voice over, but the identity of the narrator is mytically absent.

this flick is uniquely done with the ominiscient narration as the voice of the city. it settles from the dissected perspect of policeman crime-interspecting. the audience's attention is strung with each move of the coppers, thus we sense the hard effects of collecting evidences, and also realistically depicted to objectify every character as secondary except the naked city, new york itself. it demonstrates the labourous process of those trivial crime scenes on news paper that is destinated to dismiss into oblivion circularly, saturated within the existentialistic carthesis.

In the late forties a new movie audience appeared in America, one hardened and made cynical by the horrors of the war. Hollywood reacted by producing the most brutal and pessimistic mainstream cinema since the pre-code era. Even by today's standards the violence in this movie is sadistic. In the first couple of minutes two thugs put a young woman's corpse into a full bath "just to be sure", then one of the thugs is drowned in the river by his partner.
This movie is groundbreaking for a couple of reasons. It was one of the first features to be shot on the streets of New York. There are several moments where you can spot bystanders staring at the camera in bewilderment. The most interesting facet of the film is it's juxtaposing of minority figures and "Middle Americans". Up to this point ethnic minorities in Hollywood cinema were either villains or stereotypes used to generate cheap laughs. The heroes of this piece are immigrant cops and the central victim is a Polish girl who we are told changed her name to "Dexter" upon arrival in the States. The characters under suspicion are mainly WASPy types. At one point Fitzgerald's Irish cop refers to a suspect as a "clean cut, All-American boy".
Barry Fitzgerald was born in Dublin and his world-weary detective is probably to this day the most realistic portrayal of an Irishman in a Hollywood movie, full of sarcasm and frankly taking the piss out of everyone around him. If only Sean Connery had studied his performance before making "The Untouchables".
This is by no means a classic, in the pantheon of Film Noir it ranks very low for me. It is a curiosity piece though and if you're a Noir completist it's worth checking out.
Spike Lee paid homage by stealing the movie's closing line for his "Summer Of Sam".
They say there are eight million stories in the Naked City, this is a mildly enjoyable one.

"The Naked City" isn't a great film, but it's interesting to watch it for what it could have been rather than for what it is. Too much time is spent giving us a tour of New York City, which in turn causes us to lose interest. This is one of the biggest strengths of "The Naked City," as it won an Oscar for its photography, but it's also one of its biggest downfalls. The story here is so interesting that it's a shame we don't see much of it. Also, the voice-over is overused and annoying and Barry Fitzgerald seems to think he's doing a better job than he actually is. It's nice to watch as the plot unravels and more characters enter, and the final few minutes are rather spectacular in their own right, but "The Naked City" just could have been more focused.

"Their are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them" So great. It's obvious where NYPD Blue, Law & Order & Csi get their influences from. New York City is a such a majestic & mysterious place. It's a perfect back drop for any story. The sounds of the people and trains and cars. Never a boring moment.

One of the original police procedural flicks, and done with enough film noir fare. If you dig classical cinema, I really can't see not loving this film.

The Naked City is a lesser known Film Noir from the late 40s that gives New York City a life of its own. From the annoying yet strangely appealing voiceover to the sublime shots of the NYC landscapes The Naked City isn't great but is an early film that deserves some credit for making NYC seem like such an evil yet appealing city. The acting isn't great but as far as Film Noir goes The Naked City has to be above par.

4/5 stars for location shots. Amazing of UWS, LES and midtown. Old subway/El and double-decker bus. Soda shops, magazine kiosks. Kids swimming in East River. If you love New York, you have to see this movie.

Frank Niles might be one of the dumbest "conmen" to ever grace the silver screen. He's a horrible, unconvincing liar who is caught almost instantly in every lie he tells. It's a shame he has to run up against lieutenant Muldoon and Detective Halloran. Muldoon is a cool character. An irish cop with decades of experience, he breaks down the stories of big liars like Niles like crackers in soup. It seems a model has been murdered, and there's a matter of a stolen box of jewelry from the dead woman's apartment. It adds up to a ring of conspiracy and the hunt for a harmonica-playing wrestler. And dumb Niles with his cheap alibies is right in the middle of it.

As the film opens, narrator Mark Hellinger tells us this film is unlike any we have ever seen. Not shot on a studio sound stage or back lot, The Naked City was filmed on the actual streets of New York City. As good as it sounds on paper, 1948 microphones and recording equipment had difficulty picking up the actors' lines over the noise of the busy city streets. The easy solution, in addition to doing overdubs later in the studio, was to have a narration. This gives the film a certain aire of authenticity (it's been called a "semi-documentary"). There is a gritty realism on display here that one doesn't normally find in the noir films of this period (I wonder just how influential this film was to Jack Webb when he was creating the "Dragnet" series).

The star here is not any actor but 1947 Manhattan; the film's drenched in a showcasing of it. Well over 100 scenes and almost all of them, interior AND exterior, are on location.

When the viewer follows the murder victim into the morgue of Bellevue Hospital it is indeed that morgue. When a tenderfoot cop confronts the murderer in his seedy Lower East Side tenement apartment it is indeed the inside of such a tenement. Vast panoramas of Manhattan from atop the Williamsburg Bridge, scurrying about ethically diverse neighborhoods and delicatessens, a subway ride out to Queens, staring from the ground straight up an Art Deco skyscraper (hinting at German Expressionism), the underbelly crime and criminals.

All intended as love-letter to everything that was once New York.

And it was no directorial accident: Hollywood sets/studios were intentionally abandoned to tap into the then-recent history of non-set shooting that was Italian neo-realism and World War II documentaries.

There's a hint of noir - femme fatale mysteriously murdered, sketchy fast-talking Joes, boosted jewelry, a droll voiceover. But really most of the story that Manhattan is backdropping here is a rather cliche look at flatfoot procedural drudgery toward solving the crime - endless knocking on doors to ask questions, endless days of walking all over town showing pictures, the killer likes to play the harmonica so hit the bricks.

It's overly nostalgic and idealistic - and as hard-to-swallow as some of CSI's plotlines.

The true value of this film is its authentic gandering at mid-Century New York, which is why Criterion stepped up to the plate. The image resto is top-notch but, oddly, Criterion delivered short on extras. Two 30-minute-shorts with semi-expert talking heads, a tepid commentary, some stills, not even any captioning.

RECOMMENDATION: For the cinematography only, recommended.

The narration can be bothering a bit but the view of the Manhattan and the masterhood of Jules Dassin in making a noir make an excellent movie.