While the City Sleeps (1955)
Average Rating: 8.9/10
Reviews Counted: 9
Fresh: 9 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
Release Date: Jan 1, 1955 Wide
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Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 781
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Movie Info
When media mogul Amos Kyne (Robert Warwick) dies, his business, which includes a major newspaper, a television station, and a wire news service, is turned over to his sole heir, his foppish, ne'er do well son (Vincent Price). The younger Kyne has no knowledge of how to run the company his father built, preferring to spend his time spending the money that it generates, and he decides to let the heads of the three divisions -- newspaper editor John Day Griffith (Thomas Mitchell), wire service
Jan 1, 1955 Wide
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Cast
-
Dana Andrews
Edward Mobley -
Ida Lupino
Mildred Donner -
Sally Forrest
Nancy Liggett -
Rhonda Fleming
Dorothy Kyne -
Thomas Mitchell
John Day Griffith -
George Sanders
Mark Loving -
Vincent Price
Walter Kyne Jr. -
Howard Duff
Lt. Burt Kaufman -
James Craig
Harry Kritzer -
John Drew Barrymore
Robert Manners -
Robert Warwick
Amos Kyne -
Ralph Peters
Meade -
Larry J. Blake
Police Sergeant -
Ed Hinton
O'Leary -
Mae Marsh
Mrs. Manners -
Sandra White
Judith Fenton -
Celia Lovsky
Miss Dodd -
Pitt Herbert
Bartender -
Vladimir Sokoloff
George Palsky -
-
David Andrews
Bar Pianist
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All Critics (14) | Top Critics (3) | Fresh (9) | Rotten (0) | DVD (2)
Harsh, leering, implausible and fascinating -- it's the type of yarn that might have been dramatized in 'The Strangler,' the fictional dime horror comic that is the favorite reading matter of the story's over-aged j.d. 'mama's boy' murderer.
One of Fritz Lang's last and best American film noir, the plot is complex and involving, and the visual style clear and extremely effective
Inventive as both a crime thriller, and a look at the omnipresent modern media.
More a social commentary than a straight crime drama.
Good Lang noir.
Audience Reviews for While the City Sleeps
Super Reviewer
"While the City Sleeps" is an entertaining movie performed with aplomb by a marvelous cast(not forgetting Ida Lupino and who could?) that owes more than a little debt to King Lear in its division of a kingdom.(And a character also references Macbeth.) And director Fritz Lang is certainly in his element here, again exploring civic responsibility with newspapers and related media in a free society that cannot properly function if they work entirely out of self-interest, as depicted here. As Amos puts it, a newspaper allows the citizens to make up their own mind while at the same time he puts the lipstick killer on the front page to scare everybody. Even though there is a killer on the loose, that's no reason to panic. And it is certainly no reason to take a cheap shot at comic books even in the wake of organized hysteria.
Super Reviewer
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Foreign Titles
- While the City Sleeps (1955) (DE)
- While the City Sleeps (1955) (UK)

