1948 Directed by Jules Dassin
The Naked City portrays the police investigation that follows the murder of a young model. A veteran cop is placed in charge of the case and he sets about, with the help of other beat cops and detectives, finding the girl's killer.
Barry Fitzgerald Howard Duff Dorothy Hart Don Taylor Frank Conroy Ted de Corsia House Jameson Anne Sargent Adelaide Klein Grover Burgess Tom Pedi Enid Markey Mark Hellinger Jean Adair Celia Adler Janie Alexander Joyce Allen Beverly Bayne Ralph Brooks Harris Brown Ralph Bunker Walter Burke Alexander Campbell Retta Coleman G. Pat Collins Curt Conway Russ Conway Grace Coppin William Cottrell Show All…
Die nackte Stadt, Stadt ohne Maske, New York esrarı, Storstad, La ciudad desnuda, Обнаженный город, Oraşul nud, Nos Bastidores de Nova Iorque, Nagie miasto, 裸の町, Hadaka no machi, La città nuda, A meztelen város, Γυμνή πόλη, La cité sans voiles, Alaston kaupunki, Den nøgne by, Cidade Nua, Γυμνή Πόλις, La Cité sans voiles, עיר עירומה, 네이키드 시티, 不夜城
USANR
New York City, New York
USA
Germany12
Netherlands
Germany
Netherlands
USA
What an idea to shoot a noir on the rough streets of New York?
Pieces of this film feel like they're ready for the 70s. I wonder if William Friedkin was inspired at all by this film in making The French Connection, especially with the cop chases on the subway. They make it very clear upfront that this was shot mostly on the actual streets of New York, something which would have been very rare in the 40s. Given how expensive and immobile camera equipment was, it was hardly practical to shoot on location, but in a noir about a dirty city, this technique works extremely well. Especially as they are emphasizing how amoral its citizens are.
Of Jules Dassin's…
The June / July Classic Crime Project: 1930-1969
me: i don't like voiceovers
the naked city: hi
me: ashgdghsadghf
First time i have seen this in about a decade, also this is the first time I have seen the 2016 resto of this on the Arrow release (it was a tenner in their sale with Brute Force, i couldn't resist and it is nice to upgrade my old Criterion DVDs of these). This looks amazing by the way, as considering the nightmare in trying to restore this finding footage, it would have been a mammoth task and really for tone and image clarity, it massively improves on the previous standard HD of it.
Now no matter how amazing this resto looks,it sounds fantastic as well, as they restored the Miklós Rózsa score.... However I wish when they recreated the…
"Dear God, why wasn't she born ugly? "
I did not get to nearly the amount of noirs I wanted to this Noirvember simply because life gets in the way of life way too often these days (or life just getting in the way of movie watching really), but I'm so thankful I got this one under my belt late in the month as I finally got to pop my Jules Dassin cherry. It's been too long a time coming and it was a hell of great film to do with it with to boot! (Which, I knew it would be, of course.)
What first struck me about his photorealistic approach to this story was how it is simply a…
Pseudo-documentarian approach to noir. Shot on location and stylistically inspired by photojournalist Weegee, it aspires to an almost neorealist aesthetic that effectively complements its pure, archetypal police procedural narrative. The Naked City is realism and verisimilitude both in style and content, cinéma vérité applied to the murder mystery.
The strictness of its historical accuracy can of course be debated — why not just make an actual documentary? But this begs the question of the historical accuracy of documentaries themselves. Nonfiction status doesn't grant special access to truth; documentaries are just as biased as narrative cinema. The Naked City is just as faithful a depiction of New York City in the 1940's as any nonfiction film.
There's an almost didactic attention…
Noir-November Challenge! Movie #46
Fantastic early police procedural! I can definitely see why this Jules Dassin film in particular inspired Akira Kurosawa's film Stray Dog! Extraordinary shots of the bustling city, the wise, no nonsense inspector Muldoon gifted with the foresight to understand that the devil is in the details! Pair him up with a greenhorn detective, a complex murder case and you've got a film noir worthy of your attention!
My big pet peeve was the totally amateur and unnecessary narration that reminded me of early Disney films involving wildlife scenes.. like otters playing in the snow! It may be cute filler in Disney films but it was darn right annoying in this crime drama!
Intellectually, I recognize the audacity and, ultimately, genius behind Naked City, and I intensely admire the commitment of Jules Dassin and Mark Hellinger to creating something so special, and so singularly New York (the city in which they both grew up). It's stunning to look at, and the final sequence atop the Williamsburg Bridge — which took three full weeks to shoot — is absolutely breathtaking. But I also felt almost no emotionally connection to the story and its characters, apart from mild dislike of some of them. Part of that is the result of Hellinger's clever, ironically detached voiceover — it intentionally reminds us of how routine everything that happens is, but the constant patter about how un-special these…
I loved this so, so much, and it absolutely cemented my opinion of Jules Dassin as one of the very best directors of this era. I've seen it billed as a Noir, but The Naked City is really a mix of styles - there's a crime story at its heart, but the crew are so delighted at filming on location in New York City that elements of documentary and neo-realism style footage of people going about their daily lives give this a strange, fresh feel.
It's by no means perfect; the large cast showcase an extremely mixed level of talent. Most of the main cast are fine, but there are actors in smaller roles who over- or underact considerably. The…
More movies need to have narrators that talk constant shit through out the whole running time.
The Naked City is a film noir detective story nestled within a semi-documentary city symphony film. The story, itself, involving a murder of young model, stolen jewelry and an acrobatic wrestler is enjoyable enough (highlighted by a humorous performance from Barry Fitzgerald as Det. Lt. Dan Muldoon), but the cityscape is the main attraction.
This is cinematographer William H. Daniels's film!
The beginning of Jules Dassin's The Naked City features some of the greatest aerial shots of NYC in stunning black-and-white. Actually, just, some of the greatest aerial shots of any city on film, rivaling Henri Alekan's gorgeous black-and-white aerials from Wings of Desire.
Aside from the aerials Daniels also expertly captures the city on the ground once the film's…
The Naked City is, for me, the weakest of Jules Dassin's noir oeuvre; but it's still a very interesting film. The plot focuses on a police investigation of the murder of a young girl inside her own apartment. The film begins with a voiceover and the style is somewhere between a news report and a drama. I've seen the voice over used in a handful of noir films and normally I don't like it; but here it gives the film a real pulpy kind of feel and it actually works quite well - the injections of humour here and there help also. The plot itself is well put together - the investigation is always interesting and the film is careful…
