The Naked City

Plot synopsis:
In the late hours of a hot New York summer night, a pair of men subdue and kill Jean Dexter, an ex-model, by knocking her out with chloroform and drowning her in her bathtub. When one of the murderers, conscience-stricken, gets drunk, the other kills him, then lifts his body into the air and throws it into the East River.
Homicide Detective Lt. Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) and his young associate, Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor), are assigned to Jean's case, which the medical examination has determined was murder, not an accident. Muldoon has been a homicide cop for 22 years; Halloran for three months. At the scene, the police interrogate Martha Swenson (Virginia Mullen), Jean's housekeeper, about Jean's friends, and she tells them about a "Mr. Henderson." They also discover a bottle of sleeping pills and her address book. Halloran questions the doctor who prescribed the pills, Lawrence Stoneman (House Jameson), and Ruth Morrison (Dorothy Hart), another model. Back at the police station, Muldoon questions Frank Niles (Howard Duff), who lies about everything, claiming only a business relationship with Jean and denying knowing Ruth, to whom he is engaged. The police quickly discover the truth behind many of his lies. Later, Muldoon deduces from the bruises on Jean's neck that she was killed by at least two men.
That evening, Jean's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Batory, from whom she had been estranged, arrive in New York to formally identify the body, and tell the detectives that they have no knowledge of Jean's acquaintances. The next morning, the detectives learn that Frank sold a gold cigarette case stolen from Stoneman, then purchased a one-way airline ticket to Mexico. They also discover that Jean's ring was stolen from the home of a wealthy Mrs. Hylton (Enid Markey). At Mrs. Hylton's Park Avenue apartment, the police learn that the ring actually belonged to her daughter, who, to their surprise, turns out to be Ruth. Learning that Ruth's engagement ring is also stolen property, Muldoon and Halloran take Ruth to Frank's apartment, where they coincidentally interrupt someone trying to murder him. The killer takes a shot at the cops and escapes onto the nearby elevated train. When questioned about the stolen jewelry, Frank claims that they were all presents from Jean, which reveals his true relationship with her, much to Ruth's chagrin. Frank is then arrested for the jewel thefts, but the murder case remains open.
Halloran learns that a body recovered from the East River, that of Peter Backalis (Walter Burke), a small-time burglar, died within hours of the Dexter murder and connects the two incidents. Muldoon, although skeptical, lets him pursue the lead and assigns two veteran detectives on the squad to help Halloran with the legwork. Through further methodical but tedious investigation, Halloran discovers that Backalis' accomplice on a jewelry store burglary was Willie Garzah (Ted de Corsia), a former wrestler with a penchant for playing the harmonica. While Halloran and his team canvass the Lower East Side of New York using an old publicity photograph of Garzah, Muldoon compels Frank Niles to identify Jean's mystery boyfriend. Dr. Stoneman is "Henderson". At Stoneman's office, Muldoon uses Frank to trap the married physician into confessing that he fell in love with Jean, only to learn that she and Frank were using him in order to rob his society friends. Frank then confesses that Garzah killed Jean and Backalis. Halloran and Muldoon, using different approaches, have come up with the same killer.
Meanwhile, Halloran finally locates Garzah and, pretending that Backalis is in the hospital, tries to trick Garzah to accompany him back to the hospital, but Garzah (knowing he killed Backalis) sees through the ruse. The ex-wrestler "rabbit punches" the rookie detective, momentarily knocking him unconscious. Garzah attempts to disappear in the crowded city, but as police descend upon the neighborhood, a panicked Garzah draws attention to himself when he shoots and kills a blind man's guide dog on the pedestrian walk of the Williamsburg Bridge. Garzah attempts to flee over the bridge but as police approach from both directions, he starts climbing one of the towers, and is shot and wounded. High on the tower, Garzah refuses to surrender, gunfire is exchanged, he is hit again and falls to his death.
As aerial and street shots of New York are shown, the narration concludes with the iconic line: "There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them."

Tags: murder

Review:
The sophisticated gumshoe, slinky gun moll, and glossy production values were gone; this film felt more like something you might read in a particularly lurid "true detective" tabloid.In an era when most films were shot on Hollywood backlots, THE NAKED CITY was actually filmed in New York--and while filmmakers could film with hidden cameras sound technology of the day posed a problem.
(Hellinger performed the narrative himself, and his sharp delivery is extremely effective.) The story itself reads very much like a police report, following NYPD detectives as they seek to solve a dress model's murder.For 1948 it was innovative stuff-but like many innovative films it falters a bit in comparison to later films that improved upon the idea.
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".
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.
In an era when everything was recreated on a Hollywood set, or filmed on their back lots, "Naked City" was different and daring - it was shot on the streets of New York City, and the grittiness and realism was palpable.
Ted DeCorsia is great as the villain; catch his other roles."Detective Story" (see review) came out three years later and in its squad room dialogue has more in common with "NYPD Blue" than "Naked City" the movie, but for the realism of the streets and even  cinema verite feel, nothing tops "Naked City".
The experienced Homicide Lieutenant Detective Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) initiates his investigations with Detective Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor) and his team, and the prime suspect becomes Jean's friend Frank Niles (Howard Duff), who he an alibi but tells many lies in his statement.The director Jules Dassin from the masterpiece "Du Rififi Chez Les Hommes" and "Night and the City" presents "The Naked City" totally filmed in locations of New York City and with actors interacting with common people on the streets like in the Italian Neo-Realism.
In the conclusion, the narrator tells that this is one of the 8,000,000 stories of the naked city, in a time where New York City had only this population (against more than 20 million inhabitants of the present days).
After a half century, Naked City still stands out as one of the best on-location movies filmed in New York City.
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.
Though credited as being a groundbreaking movie that brought documentary-style film-making to the stylized genre of film noir (thanks to smaller cameras that were developed during the war, as well as the popularity of the Italian neo-realists), "The Naked City" seems very old-fashioned until it rushes toward its denouement on the streets and bridges (well, the Williamsburg Bridge) of New York.
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.
Hellinger and Dassin must have enlisted the services of every character-actor and bit-player in the Tri-State area, and film buffs will have a trivia tournament in trying to pick them out.The Naked City ends with a chase over hot pavements and a stand-off high up on one of the bridges spanning the East River.
The story follows a police procedural pattern as Barry Fitzgerald's Lt. Dan Muldoon and his wet behind the ears side-kick Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor) try to crack the case of a murdered blonde playgirl.
Starting with The Naked City, noir saw the impact of combat photography in location shootings and gritty realism.The Naked City, as narrated at the outset by the producer, was shot on location in New York in the apparently scorching summer of 1947.
A lot of the authentic police procedural is too tame and dated compared to what one normally see on TV today.Apart from the groundbreaking decision to shoot on location, the only other selling point of the film is the chase in the last 15 minutes of the movie.
Jules Dassin, one of the great film noir helmers, creates a visual representation of New York City that is not only breathtaking, but relentlessly nostalgic today.
Raw and naked emotions makes the city of New York the real star in this classic crime drama.
With the murder of Jean Dexter now solved, and out of the newspaper headlines and in the garbage can,the film ends with the now famous line: "There Are Eight Million Stories In The Naked City; This Has Been ONE Of THEM"..
The producer/narrator informs us in the opening sequence of "The Naked City" that the movie won't be something we're used to, it's going to be filmed on location, it's going to tell a realistic story of life in a city of 8 million.
Jules Dassin's 'The Naked City (1948)' is a fair Hollywood attempt at blending the styles of neorealism and film noir, both of which were at the time only beginning to receive due recognition.
This has been one of them." Coming only moments after a murderer falls to his death from the Williamsburg Bridge, this narration assures us, as critic Luc Sante writes in his Criterion Collection essay, "that what we briefly experienced as a cosmic struggle up above the earth was really just another statistic." In a city of eight million people, such high-drama attains only passing significance: workers file past the apartment building where a young model was brutally murdered; children play jump-rope outside the office window of a detective embroiled in a homicide case; a street-sweeper cleans up yesterday's discarded newspaper, its headline "DEXTER MURDER SOLVED!" having since given way to more pertinent news.
However, Hellinger's narration, which chimes in at regular intervals, can also be intrusive, and I disliked the cheerful, cloying manner in which it interacted with the characters, as in a contemporary newsreel.Despite revolving around a police procedural that has many of the classic dramatic ingredients – most memorably a suave jewel thief and pathological liar (Howard Duff) – it is only when detectives Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) and Halloran (Don Taylor) take to the streets that 'The Naked City' really springs to life.
The Naked City is a tough-as-nails detective noir (there are two murders in the first five minutes) from Jules "Rififi" Dassin, and it delivers all the suspicion, salaciousness, and shooting one could hope for – albeit not much more.As with his previous film, the prison drama Brute Force, Dassin is plunging us into a brutal underworld, although this time we're watching events from the perspective of the cops, led by Lieutenant Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald), as they investigate the murder of a female model.
Suspects come and go, with some really dodgy ones thrown in as red herrings, before the culprit takes his pursuers on a tour of New York landmarks.Claiming to present the city "as it is", Dassin shot the film largely without sets, giving the exterior scenes in particular an unusual (for 1948) sense of authenticity.
The same can't be said of the performances, which are wildly melodramatic at times, although in the lead role Fitzgerald brings a typically wicked dry wit.The script might lack the sharpness of a true classic such as Double Indemnity, and the dialogue could have done with some hard boiling by the likes of Jim "The Killing" Thompson, but the film ebbs and flows admirably, daring to portray detective work as an imperfect science.
With the death of an attractive young woman in a mid-town apartment the media grab hold of it quickly and Detective Lieutenant Dan Muldoon quickly feels the pressure to process this crime with young Detective Jimmy Halloran doing the leg work.It is interesting to look back on this film through the eyes of someone who loves Homicide and The Wire because this film's main selling point appears to be that it was shot on location across New York and in a realistic, semi-documentary style.
Although it has dated slightly over the years and by way of comparison of the aforementioned realistic modern series, Naked City still works by feeling like it is set within the real world, albeit a "real world" that doesn't resemble ours as much as modern films do.
There are 8 million stories in the naked city.Filmed in stark black & white and shot (at a breathtaking pace) on location in New York, Naked City, from 1948, is an engrossingly vivid film of American crime.Greatly influenced by Italian neorealism, Naked City remains a true benchmark for naturalism in Film Noir.This double Academy Award winner literally lives and breathes in the promises and perils of the Big Apple, from its lowest depths to its highest skyscrapers.Check it out..
But it's how they are connected and how DeCorsia is literally brought down that The Naked City plot deals with.Homicide cops Barry Fitzgerald and Don Taylor are assigned to the case and the plot of the film is pretty much like the police investigation part of a typical Law and Order episode.
I've known at least one person like that in my life, a pathological liar who just gets used to the lies, it's a miracle he keeps his stories straight.The Naked City was the film debut of two beloved character players James Gregory and Walter Burke.
Gregory has his one scene with Don Taylor where Gregory is a beat cop who gave him a key lead on DeCorsia's identity and Burke is the second victim and he's killed in the first ten minutes of the film.But the real star of The Naked City is 1948 New York in which your's truly has no memory of because I was in my first year on the planet.
The crime film that popularized the use of a narrator in detailing "just one of the 6 million stories in the naked city."  When this "voice-over" approach came to television 10 years later, it proved a hit all over again.
The cast is pedestrian enough to be believable but the little Irish immigrant detective is comical (as is a lot of the afore-mentioned narration) and this does not bode well for a supposedly gritty game of "tell it like it is" police procedure and true crime criminals.There are some interesting cityscapes photographed with an on location realism.
The rest of the story centers on a Manhattan cop, Lt. Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald), and his "homicide squad", as they try to solve the murder.The film is a little unusual for its time period in that most crimes in 1930s and 1940s crime films were solved by cerebral private detectives, like Sam Spade or Charlie Chan.
Detective Lt Dan Muldoon and his men from the Homicide Squad are on the case...Interesting, in that all the scenes were shot on actual New York locations - nothing was shot in a studio.
"The Naked City" is a good film but it's downright inferior to Dassin's sensational " Night and the City" .It lacks madness and although it does not lack impressive scenes ,it suffers from a pointless voice-over -they say it was imposed on Dassin- who wants to make sure that a policeman's work is never done among other things.Great scenes: the parents in the mortuary,an emotional peak when the mother finally breaks down;the girl discovering her lover was cheating on her;and above all,Ted De Corsia's character and the final chase which predates Richard Widmark's in "Night and the city" by two years.
A woman is found dead in her bed by her cleaning lady which appears to be a suicide until the New York City police detectives take over the case and work it like a homicide.
Mark Hellinger, the producer, may have passed away too soon after his very personalized "love note" to New York was completed, but didn't director Jules Dassin ever bother to look more closely at the finished product before it was finally released to the world?I liked the realistic atmosphere of the hot summer days and nights in New York, and, for a time, the documentary style did succeed in authenticating a fictional story.
The two actors who left the biggest impressions on me here were not the leads but rather Ted de Corsia, who effortlessly played a very sinister Willy Garzah, and a mostly unknown Adelaide Klein as the mother of murder victim, Jean Dexter, in two very gripping and convincing scenes inside and then outside of the city morgue.Aside from the often goofy interjections of the pedestrians on the street, which were not only unnecessary but at times disruptive to the natural flow of events on the screen, this film allowed us a no-nonsense, if not disturbing, view of the Big Apple during the simmering summer of 1947 before the days of air conditioning, presented in glorious black and white.
The film takes place in and around New York City, and the story begins with the murder of a blonde model in her apartment - apparently part of a robbery.
The film then follows two police detectives on the case of the murder, and the way that they tie up the connection with it and the robbery.Director Jules Dassin does a good job of capturing his central location, and New York City provides a good place for a story like this to take place.
I had watched this on Italian TV, but the last time was years ago; it's a seminal noir, truly one of the finest examples of the genre (and, arguably, Dassin's best film)  made in a semi-documentary style comprising compelling police procedural and remarkable location shooting.
The investigation of the central murder case also helped solve another (the killer's own associate) as well as a series of robberies involving Howard Duff (who had been one of the desperate prisoners in director Dassin and producer Mark Hellinger's previous noir, BRUTE FORCE [1947])  described by Fitzgerald as the worst liar he has come across in his long years of service!
I especially like the unusual touches that give the movie a higher production value, like Muldoon comforting the grieving parents by the Hudson at dusk, or the ultimate villain futilely trying to escape by climbing up the actual towers, shot at wonderfully wide angles.I have a feeling that much of this movie inspired Dragnet through its various incarnations (it even features Kathleen Freeman who played the foul landlady in the 1987 version) but there's no doubt that it layed the groundwork for pretty much all cops shows that ever existed, including its own TV-spin in the 50s and then again the 80s with a couple of TV movies.I don't rate The Naked City highly as a film noir, or as a detective movie, but it is still a fascinating watch to see how much New York has lost and changed over the years and how the populace has evolved..
While "The Naked City" is considered "Film-Noir" by many who have seen it, in truth it is simply a routine detective story.
What makes the film as great as it is(and it is a great film)is the Oscar winning photography by William Daniels who shot the film not in a studio but on the streets and in the buildings of "The Naked City", New York City.From the very opening of the film when Producer-Narrator Mark Hellinger introduces himself and tells you that this film "is quite different from anything you've ever seen",  the viewer is hooked.
He nearly steals the picture but not from the actors, but from the city who is the real "star" of the film.Hellinger was formerly a New York Newspaper man.
Jules Dassin decided to bring his cameras to the streets showing what a real New York looked like and got an excellent performance from most of the people that had no idea they were providing themselves as extras for the film.
The film's producer, Mark Hellinger, narrates.Shot on location on New York City streets in secret, and semi-documentary in style, the film is ground-breaking.
It gives you a real good snap shot of life all over New York City in that post war time period and meticulously documents street-level police investigative procedure.
Directed by Jules Dassin and filmed in a documentary style on the streets of New York City.