The Sleeping City

This novel crime film set entirely in Bellvue Hospital in NYC is more interesting for its picture of intern life at mid-century than for its farfetched premise of a police detective planted inside the institution as a physician to try to catch a murderer. Realistic location shooting enjoyed a vogue in the late 40's and early 50's, and undoubtedly Bellvue was well compensated for extending its hospitality to Hollywood. It's also a reminder of how much cigarette smoking was an accepted "relaxant" in those days, even for the medical profession. Among numerous tobacco moments, Nurse Coleen Gray urges undercover man Richrd Conte to step outside for "a cigarette and a breath of fresh air," as though one went hand in hand with the other. Although that kind of thing seems ridiculous now, in an age of idiotic comic book and video game movies, it's a pleasure to watch a film performed on an intimately human scale.

I happened to see this movie in the latter '60's on TV, while working as a resident in a NYC hospital. I was intrigued by the story, the gritty, noir hospital setting (a decaying [old]Bellevue Hospital), and unusual plot line. Although it depicts an unusual event in the 1950's, the same event had become truly epidemic a decade later. Richard Conte was wonderful, and the chronic atmosphere of the City and Bellue hung over the movie like a moldy, wet wash rag.

Now with old movies being restored on DVD, I would hope that an entrepreneur might read this and decide to add it to the annals of deep noir. Conte,a wonderful actor, needs to be seen more.

... with an intern being shot in the face at point blank range outside of the hospital as he takes a smoke break after dealing with an emergency case. The cops investigate but can find nothing amiss and can find no enemies that the victim might have had. So they decide to plant detective Fred Rowan (Richard Conte) undercover as intern Fred GIlbert. Fred had two years of premed and spent three years during WWII as a medic, but he is NOT a doctor! He is given strict instructions by the superintendent of the hospital and by his superiors in the police department to try to fake it as best he can and rely on nurses, but if he is in a pinch to do something he is not qualified to do to a patient that he MUST blow his cover and get an actual doctor. This does cause a couple of close calls that Fred manages to think his way out of.

Fred rooms with the victim's old roommate who is not exactly the welcome wagon. He has invisible lines drawn down the middle of the room like he is WKRP's Les Nessman, and all he talks about is money - how much he needs it to go into private practice and how much he resents those who have it. Fred is trying to get the guy to open up when he also ends up dead - drowned in the river with a blow to the head. Maybe it was suicide - maybe it wasn't. So now there are two deaths for Fred to investigate, still no clues.

This was very cleverly done - a rare hospital noir so there's a lack of traditional noirish characters but plenty of suspense and a well written and intelligent script.

Since it is obvious this was shot at and around Bellevue hospital, there is a prologue featuring Conte that brags on Bellevue and thanks the hospital for making their facilities available during shooting while explaining that this story could take place anywhere but it did not take place at Bellevue. During the film Bellevue is bragged on some more as the interns are taken on a mini-tour of the facilities. Recommended.

Two well-known titles in the noir cycle are The City That Never Sleeps (1953) and While The City Sleeps (1956). Before them, there was the less familiar The Sleeping City. In this last (or first), what seems asleep is not so much New York as a city-within-a-city – the huge old fortress of Bellevue Hospital, where, at night in its wards and among its staff, skulduggery is afoot. Bellvue opened its doors to the film's cast and crew, perhaps not wholly grasping that the resulting portrait might be less than reassuring to prospective patients. But it's not a story, at least explicitly, about malpractice.

A jumpy, distracted intern on his break goes outside to grab a smoke. He ends up with a bullet through his brain. Since the murder appears to be an inside job, an undercover department of the city police plants a detective (Richard Conte) in the hospital among the interns. He's had some medical training in the army and so should pass casual muster. Taking lodging in the building and going on rounds, he makes acquaintances. Among them are his bitter roommate, Alex Nichol, nursing some resentments about not being rich, either by birth or through wedlock; ward nurse Coleen Gray, raising a young son from an unhappy first marriage; and chummy elevator operator Richard Taber, who bunks down off the boiler room – where he runs a book where the cash-strapped interns can play the ponies.

What Conte's after is not just the killer but the source of an infectious but non-microbial malaise that will claim Nichol, too, the night before he was to marry. Conte finds himself the prime suspect in his roommate's death and comes close to blowing his cover before his own superiors intervene. But Conte's suspicions about Taber's bookmaking operation aren't quite on the mark; it turns out that a 'white-stuff job' is the real racket....

Light and portable equipment developed during World War II made location shooting finally feasible, and the low-budget second-features in the post-war years pioneered its use. The Sleeping City affects a pseudo-documentary style that also came into vogue as a complement to the new cinema-verité look (a chase through the bowels of the massive institution stays particularly sinister). Despite a nifty shot of the new interns descending an endless stairwell en masse, the vast hospital looks underpopulated, especially during the graveyard shift. But the claustrophobia (the whole picture is shot in and around the hospital) pays off. The main characters aren't many, but not so few that they can't deliver a final twist.

The Sleeping City has a unique, unfortunately not fully realized, setting for a noir. Shot on location at Bellevue Hospital, the film stars Richard Conte as policeman Fred Rowan as he goes undercover to solve the murder of a hospital intern.

Conte carries the film while the supporting cast mostly serves as window dressing to keep the plot moving forward. The exception being Rowan's interactions with staff member Steve Anderson, played by Alex Nichols. Nichols' character reveals more intimate details than Rowan's supposed love interest (Coleen Gray) of the film, and it his personal struggles feel genuine.

Although I won't give any spoilers, the twists in the plot are surprises sure, yet still underwhelming. What keeps this film from being more than good was its underutilization of the hospital setting. Besides one scene where Rowan aids a patient, the setting serves nothing more than as a locale when it could have uplifted an otherwise average plot. Despite the missed opportunity, Conte alone makes the Sleeping City a B-movie noir worth watching.