OVP: The Naked City (1948)

Film: The Naked City (1948)

Stars: Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Don Taylor, Frank Conroy

Director: Jules Dassin

Oscar History: 3 nominations/2 wins (Best Cinematography*, Editing*, Motion Picture Story)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

When it comes to film noir and Oscar, it's largely an "admire from a distance" situation.  Oscar did give a Best Picture statue to a film noir (The Lost Weekend), though it was one with a much more serious tone & tenor than you'd normally find in the genre, and usually they kept the statues at a distance.  There are exceptions, though, and one of them is The Naked City from 1948, which won two Oscars (for Cinematography & Editing), and was nominated in one of the writing categories.  The Naked City is probably the most famous American film we're going to get to this month, and certainly the most-lauded.  Hailed as a landmark in 1948, it would be formative in entertainment in the years that followed, particularly when it comes to television.  In many ways, The Naked City eschewed some of the more traditional aspects of the film noir genre, and instead created the formula for the police/detective procedural that would be popular in everything from The Untouchables to Law & Order.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows Dan Muldoon (Fitzgerald), an aging detective who is assigned a case to investigate the brutal murder of a young ex-model named Jean, who was drowned in her bathtub.  The motives are not clear as to why she was killed, though robbery is suspected (her jewels are missing), but Muldoon wants to know more, and starts to investigate the people in Jean's life, including Frank Niles (Duff), his chief suspect when it becomes clear that he has had a relationship with both the dead model and her friend Ruth (Hart), whom he's actually engaged to.  Frank eventually confesses to stealing the jewels as part of some con jobs he and Jean had perpetrated, but he turns out not to be a killer.  In a long chase that happens on the Williamsburg Bridge, it's another accomplice who killed Jean, and Frank is cleared on the murder.

The movie, as I said, is questionable when it comes to being a film noir, more so being a "crime picture" as Hart's character is surely not a femme fatale in a normal sense (the dead Jean, who has ruined multiple relationships as a corpse, is far more fitting of that title but she never actually speaks).  Instead, it feels more like a police mystery, which we don't really have anymore (because those are largely relegated to television), but in 1948 was still a thing that you couldn't see in your home.  Because it's formative, it does toe-the-line between being a bit dull even if it was exciting in 1948, but it still is a mystery you genuinely want to get to the end of when Fitzgerald solves the case.

The Naked City's coolest attribute is where it was filmed.  The movie takes place in New York City...but so does the production.  The picture includes a title card at the beginning calling out that it was actually filmed in New York, which means that the chase at the Williamsburg Bridge is actually on the Williamsburg Bridge.  This adds an authenticity that you wouldn't normally find in a movie like this, and it shows up in the more naturalistic cinematography, particularly during the chase sequence at the end.  Combined with the editing techniques (building suspense alongside real-world onlookers), and the way it capitalizes on a lot of twists and turns, I get why this is considered a classic of the genre, even if it's not a movie that stands out in the same way that Out of the Past or The Third Man do years later.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Brute Force, Call Northside 777, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Cry Wolf, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Secret Beyond the Door, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai