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The Naked City - 1948
Directed by Jules Dassin
Written by Albert Maltz & Malvin Wald
Starring Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart & Don Taylor
The Naked City really makes you ponder how original it must have seemed on release in 1948, being one of the first police procedural movies (I can dredge up only two that come before it, 1947 Henri-Georges Clouzot film Jenny Lamour and Fritz Lang's 1931 classic M) - one that would go on to inspire the likes of Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog, released in 1949. What sticks out even more to me however is the famous location work in New York City. In fact, the structure of the film - which includes components filmed all over New York - makes this more a film about the Big Apple than a murder. I think one of the primary influences which led Jules Dassin and his crew out into the streets during the hot summer this was made were the Italian neorealist films being made overseas - and indeed in look this movie does come close to one of my all-time favourite films, Bicycle Thieves, which came out the same year. There isn't much staging done with extras, and at times shots were filmed using hidden cameras so that people on the street acted as they normally would - unaware they were being filmed.
This film isn't just a tour of New York though - there's a murder to be solved. Two detectives - the experienced (and very Irish) Lt. Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald), and the much more inexperienced Detective Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor) are assigned to investigate the murder of ex-model Jean Dexter - drowned in her own bathtub. They find a pair of men's pajamas at the scene (imagine being a murderer and leaving your pajamas at the scene) which yields the name "Philip Henderson", they discover the fact that all of Jean's jewelry has been stolen and there is a bottle of sleeping pills nearby which have been prescribed by a doctor by the name of Lawrence Stoneman (House Jameson). The police go on to interview Jean's best friend, Ruth Morrison (Dorothy Hart), and Jean's previous boyfriend - a man who goes by the name Frank Niles (Howard Duff). Niles happens to tell the detectives a whole load of lies - he fails to tell the truth with just about every answer he gives. Are there nefarious reasons for this dishonesty, or is Niles simply a compulsive liar? All of the detectives on the case do a lot of leg-work, follow up lead after lead, and close in on the true facts surrounding the case.
Lurking in the background of The Naked City is a humble narrator - Mark Hellinger, who gives his impressions as to the work the detectives do, and the city of New York, which has it's own charms and idiosyncrasies. Hellinger happened to be the producer of The Naked City - he was a journalist, writer, theatre columnist and of course film producer. Sadly, he died of a heart attack on 21st December 1947 (some sources give his date of death as Christmas Eve) at just 44 years of age, only just squeezing in an early look at this film of his. Every time I hear that laconic narration, I can't help think of him. He'd produced some pretty good films in his day - the likes of noir classic The Killers and others featuring Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney. Hellinger also fought a tenacious battle over the score of The Naked City - the last artistic choice he'd ever fight so hard over. Dassin had assigned MGM colleague George Bassman, but Hellinger was so determined for Miklós Rózsa to give the film his musical accompaniment that he begged right up until the day before he died for his choice. Rózsa ended up scoring the action, and Frank Skinner the earlier, jazzier sections of the movie. 40s film scores always sound so bombastic to me, but there's an interesting mix to Naked City's.
The cinematography, handled by William H. Daniels, won him and the film an Oscar for what was then the black-and-white category. It all starts with a wonderful fly-over of what was already a skyscraper-festooned Manhattan Island - fascinating for it's look back in time. There's so much that's inventive here because of the newness of this kind of location shooting in a city, especially for an American production. There are a lot of long shots - for example, during a climactic chase near the end of the film - which ends up giving us a sense of perspective and scale. We get a sense of how close the person being chased is to disappearing into the throng of millions of New Yorkers - which would mean he'd certainly escape. There seems to be a lot of deep focus work as well, with a lot of action in the foreground and background that Dassin wants us to be able to clearly see. It gives the narrative a sense of gritty realness which is often lost on bare, empty sets in which there's a very specific focus and not much going on in the background. We get to really feel the fact that there are millions of stories playing out around this crime drama - and a hive of activity. The movie has such a strong heartbeat in that way, much like the neorealist films in Europe had at the time.
Malvin Wald earned an Oscar nomination for his part in writing this story, and editor Paul Weatherwax won this film it's other Oscar - no doubt a challenging and very novel project for him, with so many shots recorded on busy streets with real people on them. The chase scene itself would have earned him enough praise for this to be one of his most memorable efforts (he ended up winning another Academy Award - this one for his work on Around the World in 80 Days nearly a decade later.) All of this technical effort, from camera to editing suite, brought us well-realised visual enjoyment, but where did the inspiration originate? Funnily enough, notorious photographer Arthur Fellig - much more well known as Weegee - published a book of photographs called "Naked City", and it was Weegee who ended up being hired as a visual consultant for the film. It's debated as to how much of it's look he influenced however, and how much was really influenced by neorealism as a cinematic language the photographer couldn't come close to replicating himself. Still, it's such an interesting connection - the photographer, that title and his view of this big city.
So, this was quite a combination of intricate procedural plot detail and magnificent, bright and large-scale location photography. That really made The Naked City something new and for a film from the '40s stunningly original. Very fortunate that it fell to a filmmaker of Jules Dassin's particular talent to direct this movie - a very adaptable, inventive filmmaker with an eye for what helps a film visually on both a large and small scale. I enjoyed the detective story as well, for what it was - and it's sturdiness is probably why it's been replicated so often (most recently for the game L.A. Noire - eschewing it's original New York location of course.) I particularly enjoyed the chase at the end, which was genuinely exciting - still tense after so many decades and so many other films having had a chance to bring whatever they can to what The Naked City could only invent fresh with little that already existed to fall back on. During quieter moments, my mind would veer with fascination into sneaking peeks at 1940s society going about it's business without knowing that particular moment in these people's day would be immortalized in this film forever. Anyway, all up a worthwhile investment of time, enjoying this movie - my second Jules Dassin deep dive in a row.
Rating :
The Naked City - 1948
Directed by Jules Dassin
Written by Albert Maltz & Malvin Wald
Starring Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart & Don Taylor
The Naked City really makes you ponder how original it must have seemed on release in 1948, being one of the first police procedural movies (I can dredge up only two that come before it, 1947 Henri-Georges Clouzot film Jenny Lamour and Fritz Lang's 1931 classic M) - one that would go on to inspire the likes of Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog, released in 1949. What sticks out even more to me however is the famous location work in New York City. In fact, the structure of the film - which includes components filmed all over New York - makes this more a film about the Big Apple than a murder. I think one of the primary influences which led Jules Dassin and his crew out into the streets during the hot summer this was made were the Italian neorealist films being made overseas - and indeed in look this movie does come close to one of my all-time favourite films, Bicycle Thieves, which came out the same year. There isn't much staging done with extras, and at times shots were filmed using hidden cameras so that people on the street acted as they normally would - unaware they were being filmed.
This film isn't just a tour of New York though - there's a murder to be solved. Two detectives - the experienced (and very Irish) Lt. Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald), and the much more inexperienced Detective Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor) are assigned to investigate the murder of ex-model Jean Dexter - drowned in her own bathtub. They find a pair of men's pajamas at the scene (imagine being a murderer and leaving your pajamas at the scene) which yields the name "Philip Henderson", they discover the fact that all of Jean's jewelry has been stolen and there is a bottle of sleeping pills nearby which have been prescribed by a doctor by the name of Lawrence Stoneman (House Jameson). The police go on to interview Jean's best friend, Ruth Morrison (Dorothy Hart), and Jean's previous boyfriend - a man who goes by the name Frank Niles (Howard Duff). Niles happens to tell the detectives a whole load of lies - he fails to tell the truth with just about every answer he gives. Are there nefarious reasons for this dishonesty, or is Niles simply a compulsive liar? All of the detectives on the case do a lot of leg-work, follow up lead after lead, and close in on the true facts surrounding the case.
Lurking in the background of The Naked City is a humble narrator - Mark Hellinger, who gives his impressions as to the work the detectives do, and the city of New York, which has it's own charms and idiosyncrasies. Hellinger happened to be the producer of The Naked City - he was a journalist, writer, theatre columnist and of course film producer. Sadly, he died of a heart attack on 21st December 1947 (some sources give his date of death as Christmas Eve) at just 44 years of age, only just squeezing in an early look at this film of his. Every time I hear that laconic narration, I can't help think of him. He'd produced some pretty good films in his day - the likes of noir classic The Killers and others featuring Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney. Hellinger also fought a tenacious battle over the score of The Naked City - the last artistic choice he'd ever fight so hard over. Dassin had assigned MGM colleague George Bassman, but Hellinger was so determined for Miklós Rózsa to give the film his musical accompaniment that he begged right up until the day before he died for his choice. Rózsa ended up scoring the action, and Frank Skinner the earlier, jazzier sections of the movie. 40s film scores always sound so bombastic to me, but there's an interesting mix to Naked City's.
The cinematography, handled by William H. Daniels, won him and the film an Oscar for what was then the black-and-white category. It all starts with a wonderful fly-over of what was already a skyscraper-festooned Manhattan Island - fascinating for it's look back in time. There's so much that's inventive here because of the newness of this kind of location shooting in a city, especially for an American production. There are a lot of long shots - for example, during a climactic chase near the end of the film - which ends up giving us a sense of perspective and scale. We get a sense of how close the person being chased is to disappearing into the throng of millions of New Yorkers - which would mean he'd certainly escape. There seems to be a lot of deep focus work as well, with a lot of action in the foreground and background that Dassin wants us to be able to clearly see. It gives the narrative a sense of gritty realness which is often lost on bare, empty sets in which there's a very specific focus and not much going on in the background. We get to really feel the fact that there are millions of stories playing out around this crime drama - and a hive of activity. The movie has such a strong heartbeat in that way, much like the neorealist films in Europe had at the time.
Malvin Wald earned an Oscar nomination for his part in writing this story, and editor Paul Weatherwax won this film it's other Oscar - no doubt a challenging and very novel project for him, with so many shots recorded on busy streets with real people on them. The chase scene itself would have earned him enough praise for this to be one of his most memorable efforts (he ended up winning another Academy Award - this one for his work on Around the World in 80 Days nearly a decade later.) All of this technical effort, from camera to editing suite, brought us well-realised visual enjoyment, but where did the inspiration originate? Funnily enough, notorious photographer Arthur Fellig - much more well known as Weegee - published a book of photographs called "Naked City", and it was Weegee who ended up being hired as a visual consultant for the film. It's debated as to how much of it's look he influenced however, and how much was really influenced by neorealism as a cinematic language the photographer couldn't come close to replicating himself. Still, it's such an interesting connection - the photographer, that title and his view of this big city.
So, this was quite a combination of intricate procedural plot detail and magnificent, bright and large-scale location photography. That really made The Naked City something new and for a film from the '40s stunningly original. Very fortunate that it fell to a filmmaker of Jules Dassin's particular talent to direct this movie - a very adaptable, inventive filmmaker with an eye for what helps a film visually on both a large and small scale. I enjoyed the detective story as well, for what it was - and it's sturdiness is probably why it's been replicated so often (most recently for the game L.A. Noire - eschewing it's original New York location of course.) I particularly enjoyed the chase at the end, which was genuinely exciting - still tense after so many decades and so many other films having had a chance to bring whatever they can to what The Naked City could only invent fresh with little that already existed to fall back on. During quieter moments, my mind would veer with fascination into sneaking peeks at 1940s society going about it's business without knowing that particular moment in these people's day would be immortalized in this film forever. Anyway, all up a worthwhile investment of time, enjoying this movie - my second Jules Dassin deep dive in a row.
Rating :