While the City Sleeps

Plot synopsis:
A power struggle at Kyne, inc. ensues after the death of media magnate Amos Kyne (Robert Warwick), who turned his corporation over to his sole heir, foppish son Walter (Vincent Price).
Rather than run the Kyne, inc. himself, Walter decides to challenge the heads of its 3 divisions. Their assignment; score an exclusive story on a serial killer terrorizing women in New York City the Kyne organization's newspaper has dubbed 'The Lipstick Killer'. Whoever identifies him before the police, will be rewarded the title of Executive Director. . One of the 3, newspaper editor Jon Day Griffith (Thomas Mitchell), has an ally in high-profile Kyne reporter and television personality Edward Mobley (Dana Andrews). Wire-service chief Mark Loving (George Sanders) recruits star writer Mildred Donner (Ida Lupino) as his eyes and ears, while third contender, Harry Kritzer (James Craig), carries on a secret affair with Walter Kyne's wife, Dorothy (Rhonda Fleming).
Mobley becomes engaged to Loving's secretary, Nancy Liggett (Sally Forrest). Receiving inside information from his police friend, Lt. Kaufman (Howard Duff), Mobley taunts the killer on TV using Nancy as bait.
Nancy and Dorothy, who live across the hall from each other (since Dorothy happens to rent a discreet apartment in the same building to be able to carry out the affair with Harry), are all placed in serious jeopardy, while one of the 3 contenders for the head position of Kyne, inc. wins, another has a surprise in store.

Tags: murder

Review:
He's the 'McGuffin', if you like, for an entirely different movie, one in which the thriller element is dispatched in favour of a study of greed and the relationships, not always savory, between men and women.The film is set in the world of newspapers and news agencies, so you expect an aura of venality from the outset.
The one who 'catches' or names the serial killer terrorizing women in New York, gets it.Like many of Lang's films, "While the City Sleeps" had the tawdry feel of a B-movie.
About the biggest name in the movie and the 'star' of the picture is Dana Andrews, (superb, he was a very under-rated actor), as the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who, like many of Lang's characters, is less noble than he first appears.
As for the rest, despite there being two Oscar winners in the cast, (George Sanders, one of his poorer performances, and Thomas Mitchell, excellent), they were mainly the stable diet of the B-movie, though that said there is a terrific performance from the under-rated Sally Forrest as Andrews' girl who he is not above using as bait to catch the killer and a typically flamboyant one from Ida Lupino.After this, Lang was to make only one more film in America before returning to his native Germany, the equally cynical "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt".
The film, a dazzling allegory on media manipulation and modernity may not work on single viewing and perhaps that's why it's so underrated, despite a superb cast: Dana Andrews, George Sanders, Ida Lupino, Vincent Price, Mae Marsh, Rhonda Fleming and John Drew Barrymore(the son of the great John Barrymore).
More like a melodrama bordering on a drama but for the presence of John Barrymore, Jr. It had a great cast with lots off recognizable names and the director was Fritz Lang.I just thought it wasn't up to the lofty standard set by Lang in earlier films like 'M" and "The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse", but truth be told, these pictures were made many years before this one.
Too much dialogue here, and this picture dearly needed an injection of excitement to break the tedium of the love stories in the sub-plot.I like Dana Andrews, Thomas Mitchell, George Sanders, et al.
Tugboats scudding down a dark river nudge us urgently into `New York City  Tonight.'  Fritz Lang's While The City Sleep opens like an urban legend: A drugstore delivery man (John Barrymore, Jr.) invades an apartment on a quiet street of brownstones and murders a young woman.
For all his menace, Barrymore's not the brightest lad in the boroughs, and thus can be excused for mixing up his targets....With its high-powered (and hammy) cast, its blend of psychopathology and cutthroat corporate culture, While The City Sleeps would end up standing as Lang's last American film but one (the far-fetched Beyond A Reasonable Doubt, also starring Andrews).
With this story becoming big news Kyne Jr decides how he will appoint his new Ex Director  it will be the first of the potential employees to bring him the scoop on the Lipstick Killer, as he is known.With an intriguing plot and an impressive ensemble approach with the casting, this film offered much and, although it could have been darker in tone, it still offered a lot of potential to be a slick urban mystery.
Fritz Lang is widely regarded as one of the leading directors of his time, so a look at 'While the City Sleeps', one of his last films, should provide an interesting insight into where the art of cinema was in the mid-1950s.
It's bequeathed to his singular beneficiary, his pariah son Vincent Price, who hits the ground running to establish that he's not his father's imbecile offspring by devising a new top executive position to act as his man Friday and run the whole enterprise, and grants the candidacy to be among the city editor played with Thomas Mitchell's infectious presence, the head of the wire service played with George Sanders' Transatlantic adaptation of his unabashedly British persona, and the photo editor played with James Craig's old-fashioned American masculinity.
Pulitzer-winning reporter and the station's commentator, played by the always appealing laid-back Dana Andrews, is unwilling to get involved, but after all does and signs on to help his close friend Mitchell.Fritz Lang's 22nd English-language film, which itself, interestingly, is a conglomeration of film noir, psychological thriller and sociopolitical drama, is a complete observation of the modern media.
It stars some actors who had either seen better days in film or hadn't moved up the ladder much - Dana Andrews, Ida Lupino, George Sanders, Thomas Mitchell, Vincent Price, Sally Forrest, James Craig, and John Drew Barrymore.
It's a '40s cast, and the film, set in New York City, has a '40s feel to it.Andrews plays a Pulitzer-prize winning writer, Ed Mobley, an Ed Murrow type, who does a television commentary.
The first one who solves the "Lipstick Killer" murders wins the job as director of the company.The black and white cinematography gives "While the City Sleeps" a great atmosphere, and some of the characters are a real hoot, including Lupino, who plays Mildred, a columnist for the paper, and Rhonda Fleming as Kyne's gorgeous wife who is having an affair with one of the contenders, Kritzer.
Nancy is set up (with her permission) as a target for the Lipstick Killer, who uses his delivery job to unlock apartment doors by pushing in the button, and then returns and kills his single female victim.Though a little slow at times, "While the City Sleeps" is more of a newspaper story than a mystery, so there isn't a lot of suspense or excitement to be had.
Hitchcock of course treated the subject of a mother-fixated psychopath just a bit better a few years later and I would doubt he learned much from his great contemporary's earlier take on the subject.Mixed in with this is a weird background story of three prominent newspaper staff members set against each other for the top job on the paper by a miscast Vincent Price as the heir to the paper's owner who conveniently dies barely minutes into the film.
Throw in Ida Lupino as an on-the-make female reporter, content to seduce Andrews at the behest of her equally miscast editor boss George Sanders, Rhonda Fleming as Price's philandering wife and Sally Forrest, with a trendy boy-ish hair cut as Andrews' too young now-she-loves-him, now-she-doesn't girlfriend and there really are too many cooks spoiling this particular pot-boiler.There are also several scenes which are just plain odd, like when Lupino's character attempts to beguile Andrews by using an old-fashioned, supposedly salacious spectrograph which turns out to contains an image of a swaddling baby or when Price, in a natty pair of shorts practises his putting while in conversation with his statuesque wife who is striking poses in her beach-wear.
When you're gonna see a movie made by Fritz lang and starring Vincent Price and Ida Lupino , George Sanders and Rhonda Fleming , Dana Andrews and Thomas Mitchell you really think you re gonna see something else...well its not..The movie is OK and has very nice moments which shows the claw of Fritz lang and you enjoy to see those stars..but you are really not interested in the story which is quite unlikely if not quite stupid..and the choice of the very very dull Sally Forrest (a kind of under-Doris Day )spoils it all .
WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS is a film noir-cum-thriller from directorial maestro Fritz Lang, who of course made one of the greatest early serial killer movies in M.
Hollywood produced a great Newspaper picture with a great cast, Dana Andrews(Edward Mobley) was the typical newspaper report and TV broadcaster, who was always around the old watering hole(Cafe) in the same building as the "Sentinel", drinking most of the time with Sally Forrest, Ida Lupino and Thomas Mitchell.
Fritz Lang's While the City Sleeps shows the suspense master has lost a lot off of his fastball in this run of the mill drama involving a media power struggle and a serial killer.
Meanwhile a serial killer with a mother complex is terrorizing the city and finding the killer may well be the path to upward mobility.There's little tension or suspense to be found in WTCS with its incredulous oversights that lapse into silly premise with the cast playing it broad both successfully (Price, Thomas Mitchell, George Sanders) and flat (Dana Andrews, Sally Forrest, Rhonda Fleming, ) while others ( John Drew Barrymore and Ida Lupino ) take it over the top.
Goodness prevails, in the guise of square-jawed hero Dana Andrews, but the film is sparked more by the presence of Vincent Price as the Machiavellian, milquetoast media tycoon who exploits 'the lipstick murders', and by Ida Lupino as a gossip column queen willing to sell her soul to the highest bidder.
"While the city sleeps" (1956) directed by Fritz Lang as fiction before the reality has a scene where as a kind of talk show for the time in which there a detective is broadcasting live, that took him at the size of the old small screen television and looked by the wrong youngster seen on the same frame as a killer clothed like a kind of black jacket fan, otherwise the talker spelling by him somewhere in the city and waiting for his acquaintance as interlocutor.
Vying for the job are managing editor Thomas Mitchell (as John Day Griffith), wire service head George Sanders (as Mark Loving) and top photographer James Craig (as "Honest" Harry Kritzer)..."While the City Sleeps" boasts a great group of characters, taken from Charles Einstein's original story "The Bloody Spur" and kept lively by Casey Robinson's screenplay.
In smaller roles, "silent" film stars Mae Marsh (the killer's mother) and Robert Warwick (the expiring Kyne) are used exceptionally well.******* While the City Sleeps (5/16/56) Fritz Lang ~ Dana Andrews, Thomas Mitchell, John Drew Barrymore, Ida Lupino.
It is part film noir and part 1950s-60s trying to get ahead in the workplace story.A wealthy media king dies at the start and his son, Vincent Price, plays three of his father's employees (George Sanders, Thomas Mitchell, and Howard Duff) against each other.In the meantime, John Drew Barrymore is murdering young women.
Intriguing yet flawed film about a trio of newspapermen vying for a job to run a newspaper, following the death of its founder and his son subsequently taking over, by trying to find a serial killer known as the "Lipstick Killer." Fritz Lang directs with a more than solid cast with the likes of Dana Andrews, Thomas Mitchell, Ida Lupino, beautiful Rhonda Fleming, John Drew Barrymore, Nancy Ligget, Howard Duff, the indomitable George Sanders, and the urbane Vincent Price.
...dwarfed by Lang's last American opus "beyond a reasonable doubt" ."While the city sleeps" has moments of magnificence ,particularly the scene when the killer watches Andrews on TV:Lang's camera is so strong that we do believe that the young man seems to feel the journalist's presence in the room.It certainly influenced Richard Fleischer for "the Boston strangler" during the following decade .But everything revolving around the medias,the fight for THE job, left me indifferent:Billy Wilder had done a lot better with his "big carnival" (aka "ace in the hole") five or six years earlier.Frankly,compared with "beyond a reasonable doubt" ,"While the city sleeps " seems tamed ,talky ,using a cast who is not always brilliantly used (particularly Ida Lupino and George Sanders).The last opus only kept Andrews,added Joan Fontaine and Sidney Blackmer,that's all,and Lang made the American absolute masterpiece he had always threatened to make since his German heyday..
The job is promised to the first to find a homicidal maniac(John Drew Barrymore)responsible for the rash of recent murders of pretty women.A star studded cast that also features Dana Andrews, Ida Lupino, George Sanders, Howard Duff, Rhonda Fleming, Thomas Mitchell and Sally Forrest.
His spoiled son (Vincent Price) then inherits his corporation, and soon pits three employees (George Sanders, Thomas Mitchell, and James Craig) against one another in a competition for a new executive position he's going to create (the one that will do all the work, so that he doesn't have to).
We see in this a little comment director Fritz Lang has for inherited wealth as well.One of the men runs the newspaper, another the wire service, and the third's angle is to take advantage of an affair he's having with the new boss's wife (Rhonda Fleming).
Even director Fritz Lang, or actors Dana Andrews and Rhonda Fleming could have saved this memory from being forgotten.What this so called crime film is......is a waste of time.
Andrews turns in a good performance as does the rest of the cast including Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Vincent Price, Ida Lupino, Mae Marsh and we've also got John Barrymore, Jr. in the cast..
While the City Sleeps was another of those movies I had been after for a while and finally got it when BBC2 screened it during the early hours recently.Women in New York are being murdered and reporters at the Kyne newspaper are put on the case to try and catch the killer and make the story headlines before any other newspaper.
The murderer is caught and shot when escaping the subway by way of a manhole.While the City Sleeps is a very atmospheric and at times chilling thriller, especially the Subway sequence.The cast includes Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming as his lover, Goerge Sanders, horror actor Vincent Price (House of Wax), Ida Lupino, Howard Duff, John Barrymore Jnr, Robert Warwick, Sally Forrest and Thomas Mitchell.
comprised of an all-star cast, all of whom are mainly at the end of their careers but all of whom have starred in some perfect Noirs in the past (as well as getting to star with Gene Tierney!): Dana Andrews (Laura - as well as GT in Belle Starr and Tobacco Road), Vincent Price (Laura, Leave her to heaven - and Hudson's Bay and Dragonwyck), George Sanders (The Ghost and Mrs Muir - okay, not a Noir, but still a lovely shot spooky piece of celluloid!) and of course not forgetting the great Ida Lupino and Rhonda Fleming.
In the middle of the fight between the three potential candidates - main editor Griffith (George Sanders), wire service director Loving (Thomas Mitchell), photo chief Kritzer (James Craig) - there is an aspiring, hot-headed reporter named Edward Mobley (Dana Andrews).
An interesting cast here (George Sanders, Ida Lupino, Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, Thomas Mitchell, Sally Forrest, John Barrymore Jnr) move along a creaky plot which might be familiar but which has a fairly fresh and funny approach and some good moments throughout.
As the three division heads, the viewer has the fun of watching George Sanders, Thomas Mitchell and James Craig, with the ladies who complicate their lives being hard-boiled Ida Lupino, Rhonda Fleming, at her best in every sense, and lovely young Sally Forrest.
It stars Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Howard Duff, Thomas Mitchell, Vincent Price, Sally Forrest, John Barrymore Jr, James Craig and Ida Lupino.
Directed by Fritz Lang, with a screenplay by Casey Robinson, this slightly above average crime drama, behind the scenes media expose features an all star cast that includes Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Howard Duff, Thomas Mitchell, Vincent Price, James Craig, Ida Lupino, and Robert Warwick, among others.It's interesting to see how the media and police worked together in the mid-50's vs.
Walter makes it clear that whichever man is able to provide a scoop by exposing the identity of "The Lipstick Killer" will be given the top job.In the past, Amos had made it clear that he would have liked Ed Mobley (Dana Andrews) to be his successor but the Pulitzer Prize winning ex-reporter who had moved on to become an author and news commentator on the Kyne TV channel had made it known that he was not interested in seeking more power.
The characters never fully engage the interest and very little suspense is worked up despite a two-pronged plot, combining the thriller with "Executive Suite".Dana Andrews plays in his usual glum style, James Craig is even glummer, Sanders and Mitchell give their usual characterizations, while Ida Lupino overplays the femme fatale bit and Rhonda Fleming makes a good-looking but unconvincing adulteress.
The ensemble cast was wonderful because it brought together George Sanders, Thomas Mitchell, Ida Lupino, Vincent Price, Rhonda Fleming, and the menacing John Drew Barrymore Jr. to give the director a satisfying film.The only puzzling sequence involves a supposedly subway chase with a Los Angeles setting, something that clearly did not make much sense for those that realized the conflict of sites..
Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, Ida Lupino, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, and silent stars Mae Marsh and Robert Warwick for good measure.
The chase scenes and the fight between Andrews and the killer (John Drew Barrymore) have a lot of the great flavor of movies like "The Third Man" or his own "M." There's a great amoral sophistication to the way the characters interact, especially the Sanders and Lupino characters.On the whole I don't really feel like it's a great film, or one of Lang's best, but it's definitely an entertaining film with some mature ideas about the media's hunger for crime and how that compromises the integrity of the individuals within it..
The film a first comes across like a crime drama but it later boils down to running a newspaper, The Sentinel, that's at a time of crisis.Old man Amos Kyne, Robert Warwick, is just about the check out, or pass away, for good and wants his star reporter Edward Mobley, Dana Andrews, to take over the running of his newspaper.