La città nuda

THE NAKED CITY is like watching a time capsule unfold of New York City in the late '40s--the cars, the subways, the bridges, the people bustling along busy streets totally unaware of filming (scenes were shot from cars with tinted windows and two-way mirrors), and at the center of it all is a rather routine detective story. But the difference is the style that director Jules Dassin gets out of his material, giving the drama a chance to build up the proper tension before the final shootout on city streets and bridges.

BARRY FITZGERALD is the detective with the very helpful sidekick DON TAYLOR, a young police officer from Queens who helps him track down the man responsible for the death of a pretty blonde in what the tabloids called "The Bathtub Murder". Both men are excellent as they follow a batch of clues to get to the bottom of the crime. HOWARD DUFF is also excellent as a man mixed up in the robberies, with DOROTHY HART as his unsuspecting sweetheart.

TED DeCORSIA, making his film debut, is the athletic villain, working out in his small apartment when detective Taylor finds him--but soon making his escape which leads to the film's most breathtaking moments of a dazzling chase that fills the last ten minutes with high tension suspense.

The crime itself is not that interesting, but the style used to tell the tale (with a voice-over narration telling us at the conclusion that this is just one story in a city of millions) is what makes it far superior to most detective stories. That and the fact that New York City is given the spotlight for location photography that really hits the mark.

...New York! This film is presented as a quasi-documentary (it is not). Though the story is fictional, the setting is entirely real - 1948 New York City. And that is the biggest appeal of the picture (I was born and raised there so I may be biased). Some interior shots appear to have been filmed on a sound stage, but the bulk of it is on location. For example, there is a scene filmed in lower Manhattan near Rivington and Norfolk streets. It show's a bustling, thriving "family" neighborhood with well dressed folks and kids playing in the neighborhood. It looks nothing like that now - just a place to pass through to get to somewhere else (though there is a school there now - check google maps and find the intersection - you can see the same building in the opening shot for that scene).

Story-wise, it's a pretty solid film especially considering how dated movies from this period can be. There appears to be a real attempt to make the movie as accurate as possible and goes out of its way to include the methods used in solving modern crimes such as forensics - probably a novelty at the time. The acting is solid throughout. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the idea of a narrator - on the one hand, it lends authenticity to the documentary feel, but on the other, it can take you "out" of the picture at times. Overall, very worth watching. I give it a thumbs up (can I do that here?)

This is a great Film Noir movie which I enjoyed very much. My favorite part is watching all the 100's of people on the streets on New York City not having a clue that the are immortalized in this motion picture. I love to freeze frame the street scenes and view how life was like in 1948. So many surprises, for example in the phone booth scene, notice the two men peering out the window in the store across the street. I think those guys were aware of the filming, but as the scene continued, they went back to serving their customers. Just plain magic. There is also a cool goof in this film. Note during the train station chase scene, just after Frank runs by, the director or a film crew member turns towards the camera and yells what I believe is "CUT"...So Fun....I'll see again and again and again!

Can film noir work in broad daylight - surely a contradiction in terms..? Well, here, it's attempted and largely pulled off by director Jules Dassin with a down-to-earth almost documentary realism which fully involves the viewer in the action as the well-known tag-line "1 of 8,000,000 stories" (the murder of a pretty female immigrant who's fallen into bad company and criminal habits) is played out over a three-day period in a sunny summery New York cityscape. William Daniels' excellent photography captures a city constantly on the move with its own citizens as accidental extras and actual locations as would-be film-sets. Just as effective is the natural vernacular dialogue with some great one-liners thrown in - none better than Barry Fitzgerald seemingly admiring the rear view of a retreating beautiful female suspect with the remark to a junior colleague "Beautiful long legs she has, wouldn't you say?" to which the underling readily concurs only for old pro Fitzgerald to snap "Keep them in sight for the next 48 hours!" detailing a tail on her. There's also another great scene where the murdered girl's mother berates to all and sundry her dead daughter for her reckless lifestyle and bringing of shame onto her family right up until she is taken to identify the corpse where she breaks down uncontrollably, her maternal feelings restored. The murder tale is slightly convoluted but reasonably easy to follow, no contrived clever-clever plotting here, just an everyday relatively uncomplicated murder, solved by routine police work which makes the headlines due to the beauty of the victim. There's close attention paid to forensics and even the insertion of scenes where perennial sad hoaxers come forward to either claim to solve the murder or even confess to it. The acting is mostly good, Fitzgerald is dapper and spot-on as the world-weary 'tec and his supporting officers all acquit themselves well too. The playing however of some of the criminals gets a little overwrought at times and jars the mood slightly. The film arrives at a reasonably exciting conclusion high above Williamsburg Bridge before the city goes back to sleep awaiting its next story... All done and dusted in 90 very watchable minutes, this is a very entertaining film-blanc I suppose you'd have to call it.

That's just what the producer, Mark Hellinger does. He tries to make it clear from the introduction that this is not your average movie. It is not. This entire production tries to accomplish one thing - authenticity. And for the most part, it succeeds.

Before I get to what's right about this movie, let me mention a few of the things that are wrong. Ted DeCorsia overacts. He always overacts. Howard Duff's character, Frankie Niles, is supposed to be a streetwise grifter. How the hell could he be dumb enough to get himself in as many pickles as he did. Anybody who has ever been around the block would know better than to lie to the cops about everything. Just lie about the important things and tell the truth when it won't hurt you. If this guy is a sociopath, he's the dumbest one in town. Although most of the accents are on the money, the incidental dialogue injected into some of the scenes sounds forced and phony. In fact, it sounds like Hollywood trying to sound like New York. Mark Hellinger's narration, by comparison, is not only authentic, it's practically Damon Runyonesque.

Now - what's right. Practically everything else. The location photography is the New York I remember as a kid. While I was watching some of the hot summer scenes downtown, I could practically smell the asphalt, melting tar, and garbage. Don Taylor's brick duplex in Queens was just the kind of house that every struggling family on the wrong side of Brooklyn aspired to.

I won't comment on the story except to say, it's an entirely believable crime story. I seem to remember Barry Fitzgerald playing a similar role in Union Station. Reminds one of the old days when most of the cops were Irish - and New York was really New York.