Chicago - 12 Uhr Mitternacht

I can't wait to see the DVD release of this film with the features and commentary because it is one of those rare Noir films that stay with you. Not so much for the average domestic problems that Gig Young's character displays but more for his relationship with Mala Powers and their great quotable lines:

Sally "Angel Face" Connors, dressed in a stripper's costume to Johnny Kelly- "Come here." Kelly's reply: "I've been there."

And Angel Face's great speech explaining her disillusionment: "I'm sick of this town. I'm with you Johnny. When I first came to this town I was gonna be... oh there were a lotta things I was gonna be- become famous. But Chicago's the big melting pot, and I got melted but good".

And there are also the throw-away lines in the bar: Waitress to Bartender: "Two Old Fashions- no ice, no water, no sugar, no grenadine".

"City That Never Sleeps" has a light step and has so many quirky little characters that you might wonder who the story is about. The film does focus on certain characters to make its point, is sometimes great to look at for its night-lit location photography and has some nice noir humor.

Gig Young has the unflappable charm and bon vivant attitude that almost gets in the way of his disillusioned cop Johnny Kelly. Kelly is the ultimate Everyman who has become a cop because his father wanted him to, and whose wife unwittingly emasculates him because she earns more money that he.

All in all, "City That Never Sleeps" is worth catching for its noir look and some good performances.

This film set in Chicago in 1952 starts ponderously with a voice-over of 'the voice of the city', strangely that of actor Chill Wills (whose voice is more that of a cowpoke or a ranch hand, thus highly unsuitable for this purpose), who then appears in the crime story as a ghostly police sergeant representing the spirit of the city. Really, we could have done without those affectations, and Wills's acting attempts to be mysterious are worse. However, setting all that aside, the rest of the film is a pretty straightforward crime drama which is very good. Gig Young plays a disillusioned policeman vacillating between leaving and staying with his wife and quitting and keeping his job. One wants to kick him so that he stops dithering, but the story requires him to be like that. There are some strong performances: Mala Powers is good as a wild love interest of Young's, Edward Arnold is suave and persuasive as a bent criminal lawyer, Marie Windsor as usual is svelte and corrupt, and William Talman is very effective as a bonkers criminal who wants to shoot everybody, and nearly does. It's all good entertainment, if you look the other way when the pontificating is going on. One needs to take it with a pinch of paprika (the director, John Auer, was Hungarian).

A 1953 Republic gem and a great noir find. This sort of small black and white drama was actually what finished off Republic as TV shows took up this sort of storyline and style, and the studio didn't adapt. Cop Gig Young and burlesque floozie Mala Powers go adulterous and the realism of the noir photography created on actual Chicago streets allow the viewer to be completely absorbed into their cheap backstreet world. This is such an interesting film, and the low budget actually works in its favour......like Monogram's startling DECOY of 1947. Chill Wills appears as a very special and strange character and I won't spoil who he is at all. A very clever and ultimately quite emotional film from a fascinating period in American Cop-dom: 1953...as LA CONFIDENTIAL proved for that city. Find this and relish it, and thank the crummy world of Republic for making it. As a bonus for all us noir-ees, the sensational Marie Windsor is here as well, by the narrowest of welcome margins.

"City That Never Sleeps" is one of the strangest film noir movies I have seen--mostly because there is a real surreal aspect to the story that you just don't find in other noir pictures. I don't want to tell you more about this...suffice to say that one of the characters is VERY unusual and you learn just how unusual at the close of the movie.

Gig Young plays Johnny Kelly, a disaffected cop who is very unhappy in his marriage and is contemplating running off with his mistress, a stripper, and quitting his job on the force. When you see and hear why Johnny is unhappy, you do feel a bit sorry for him, as his evil mother-in-law lives with them and CONSTANTLY harangues him about his wife earning more than him! Instead of belting the old broad in the mouth (definitely a noir way of handling it) he plans on just leaving...for good. But before he does this he has one more night on the job...and a very eventful night it is. While there is MUCH more to the story and a plot involving William Talman who plays an amazingly cold and vicious killer, I think it's best you just see the film for yourself.

The big reveal at the end will determine whether you like this film or not...see the picture and see what I mean. I'd like to say more...but again, just see it for yourself. And, if you want to see it, it's currently up on YouTube.

Contrary to the croonings of Liza Minnelli and Frank Sinatra, The City That Never Sleeps is not New York, New York but Chicago, Illinois. At least it is in John H. Auer's 1953 movie of that name, sort of a noir-inflected Grand Hotel or Dinner At Eight, that opens and closes with floodlit vistas of the wedding-cake Wrigley Building. Several characters' lives intersect in an urban crime drama that even offers a touch of the fanciful.

Gig Young, at the center, plays a cop who's dissatisfied with his job and with his marriage (his wife, Paula Raymond, makes more money than he does). Off hours, he hangs around a strip club called The Silver Frolics on Wabash Avenue to see, both on stage and backstage, headliner Mala Powers. That relationship is a rocky as his marriage, and she's as unhappy with her lot as he with his (`Whaddaya want me to do? Crawl into a deep freeze?' she taunts him during yet another breakup). Then Young heads to the precinct for the graveyard shift, riding in a prowl car with a new partner he's never met before (Chill Wills, who also plays the unseen `Voice of the City').

During Young's nocturnal tour he meets up again and again with the various players in the plot. There's rich, crooked lawyer Edward Arnold, who blackmails him into burglarizing some incriminating papers; his two-timing wife, Marie Windsor; former magician turned criminal William Talman; his own brother (Ron Hagerthy) who's now Talman's apprentice; his pop (Otto Hulett), a police veteran; and a `mechanical man' (Gregg Warren) who entertains passersby in the Silver Frolics' window.

Some of the ties among the characters are up front, others furtive, to be doled out as the plots thicken. By the end (Poverty Row having learned the lessons MGM taught a couple of decades earlier in the titles cited above), there's tragedy and heartache, reappraisals and reconciliations. There's even a character who vanishes as mysteriously as he materialized – a whiff of the supernatural which curiously fails to leave any influence on the way the stories unfold.

The City That Never Sleeps shows the right breadth for a big, urban story – from Arnold's moderne penthouse to Young's middle-class flat to the raffish alleys running off Wabash Avenue. Director of photography John Russell (later to film Psycho) helps Auer out with some crafty touches (a telephone dial glowing from a flashlight shone upon it comes to mind). It's not a haunting movie, but it's a satisfying one – a title that did Republic Pictures proud.