THE NAKED CITY (1948)

Universal Pictures, 98m 44s

The genre-shifting influence of director Jules Dassin's benchmark docudrama THE NAKED CITY cannot be underestimated. Literally every police procedural movie and TV show that followed owes something to this Hellinger Productions creation. From a narrative standpoint, director Anthony Mann marched down a similar path with the prior year's T-MEN (1947), but that film featured the chiaroscuro cinematography of John Alton, known for the sort of high-contrast lighting setups that characterized the noir look of the 1940s. The era's stylistic grit is conspicuously absent from Dassin's film, which favors actual city streets over soundstage setups. The Italian neorealism film movement served as a reference point for THE NAKED CITY more than any American film noir. With the noir film's transition into police procedure comes a discernible faith in authority and large institutions that had been mostly absent from the genre.

The opening narration by producer Mark Hellinger eschews the hopelessness of standard film noir narration typically provided by the doomed protagonist. Instead Hellinger's approach stands as testimony to the authenticity of the production, shot on location in New York City, home to some 8 million. Appropriately for the genre, our story begins at 1:10 AM. On the surface not a lot is going on at that hour, but in NYC something is always happening, and that something is not always good. As less noteworthy events play out, a bitter reality of fast-paced urban life manifests itself. A blonde is killed in her apartment by two men, one of whom kills his accomplice shortly thereafter. After housekeeper Martha Swenson (Virginia Mullen) discovers the lifeless body of Jean Dexter, the investigation of the Manhattan murder mystery is spearheaded by Detective Lieutenant Daniel Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald). His team discovers Dexter was subdued by chloroform before being placed in her bathtub alive, where she drowned. Based on physical evidence, Muldoon correctly deduces two men were involved in the killing of Dexter.

Though THE NAKED CITY is light on the atmospheric film noir visuals of the day, connective tissue to the genre is strengthened by way of familiar themes and motifs. The differentiation of social classes is at the top of the list. Lieutenant Muldoon offers a telling comment about his weekly salary of "fifty bucks.” He struggles to imagine how any person in good conscience could spend that same amount of money during just one night on the town, as he learns a person of interest in the Dexter case did. Obviously the filmmakers are in sympathy with cash-strapped working class people like Muldoon, as well as those who mop floors, sweep up street trash and clean apartments. Dexter's estranged parents Mr. and Mrs. Batory (Grover Burgess and Adelaide Klein) are proud blue collar people who embody a familiar Hollywood formula:  the dignity of being poor. Mrs. Batory laments the fact her daughter was attractive enough to nudge her way into a better life, which ultimately amounted to a fatal mistake:

"Wanting too much. That's why she went wrong. Bright lights and theaters and furs and night clubs. That's why she's dead now."

Indeed Dexter was living the fast life, popping stimulants during the day and sleeping pills at night. The fact that Jean Dexter was not her real name draws from the common noir theme of multiple identities. Her alternate identity speaks to her vain hope of shedding her skin, to leave her simple past behind her. In a reliable film noir trope, Dexter's greed and materialism mark her for death. As her mother laments, such an outcome would not have befallen an average-looking person. Dexter is the femme fatale of this narrative; her looks informed her actions and contributed to her demise. There is testimony Dexter was fired from her job as a model because she routinely turned-on the husbands of the store's customers. The dress shop merchant suspects Dexter only would have dated a wealthy man. She believed money was the key to happiness, which is seldom true in the movies.

The married, professional man of respectability who wrecks his life over Dexter is another multiple-identity case. Dr. Stoneman (House Jameson), also known as Mr. Henderson, lost his ability to think straight after he fell for Dexter. He and Dexter hosted house parties that would coincide with robberies at the residences of their society guests in attendance. In other words, she used him. The other significant man associated with Dexter is perpetual liar Frank Niles (Howard Duff), another proponent of the fast life. A loathsome character, he freely admits he sometimes pimped her out, all while being engaged to Ruth Morrison (Dorothy Hart), a model acquainted with Dexter.

One of the city's recurring visual motifs is the bridge and the water beneath it. Though the various bridges were constructed to connect traffic from one place to another, one bridge functions in the opposite manner as it traps one of the area's more disposable inhabitants. With policemen in pursuit of him from both sides, Willie Garzah (Ted de Corsia) is left with no choice but to climb towering stairs that lead to nowhere. A strong sense of irony informs this climactic segment after Garzah planned to hide in the anonymity of the sprawling urban landscape. Instead he gets into a situation where the police cannot possibly lose him. Garzah's self-entrapment is suggested earlier when Pete Backalis (Walter Burke), a known associate of Garzah, is discovered in the East River by children. His time about to expire, Garzah's final moments take place above the same flowing waters.

Director Jules Dassin prefers tightly-wound drama over action. There is very little action to discuss until almost an hour has passed, but when the drama becomes more eventful, the filmmakers find a tight rhythm. The final police chase in particular influenced many a film noir with its smooth editing and cinematography. Probably in large part due to the film's climactic sequence, Academy Awards were handed out to William H. Daniels for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White, and Paul Weatherwax for Best Film Editing. The mostly concrete environs of the noir urban jungle were captured in New York filming locations that featured Essex Street Market, Roosevelt Hospital, Roxy Theater, Times Square, the Whitehall Building and the Williamsburg Bridge. The commercial success of THE NAKED CITY inspired the ABC television series NAKED CITY, a police drama which ran from 1958–1959 and 1960–1963.

Elaborate staircases factor into most every film noir

This welcome new Criterion Collection Blu-ray edition contains a new 4K digital restoration by TLEFilms Film Restoration & Preservation Services (Germany), with uncompressed monaural soundtrack. With the original nitrate film negative presumed unrecoverable, the film was restored over a two-year period. The new Blu-ray version is framed at 1.375:1 and displays minimal artifacts. As these screen captures confirm, the restoration displays more information on all sides of the frame compared to the 1.3:1 DVD edition Criterion issued in 2007:

Criterion Blu-ray (2020)

Criterion DVD (2007)

Supplemental material recycled from the Criterion DVD includes an audio commentary track with screenwriter Malvin Daniel Wald recorded in 1996. Originally from Brooklyn, Wald served as the project's principal writer, the creative force who labored on the script for six months before the film was shot during the summer of 1947. An amalgamation of many actual crime cases, THE NAKED CITY became a "worldwide sensation" despite a decidedly unenthusiastic theatrical release from Universal. The studio acted only out of contractual obligation after the death of producer Mark Hellinger, who died from a coronary thrombosis December 21st, 1947 at the age of 44. Apparently studio brass had no idea what Hellinger's team had accomplished.

French critics noted a new genre had been forged: the police documentary. Wald mentions two major elements that made the film unique, the first being the documentary technique from director Henry Hathaway's THE HOUSE ON 92ND STREET (1945) applied to New York City, the most heavily populated city in the US. Along with the day-to-day-life approach to filmmaking around the Big Apple, a more modern take on crime investigation was employed. Heretofore cinematic crimes were resolved by private investigators. But as revealed in THE NAKED CITY, the individual has been replaced by a large group of specialists, each bringing his own unique skill set to the methodical investigation. Detectives are assisted by coroners, various lab technicians, photographers, sketch artists and police radio operators in their combined efforts to solve crimes.

The public's acceptance of the film was followed by many narratives based upon factual cases. Wald notes the buddy cop subgenre that emerged on movie theater screens and television programming can be traced back to the commercial triumph of THE NAKED CITY, in which a veteran police lieutenant works alongside his younger equivalent Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor). Interestingly, it is the younger man who first senses a connection between two murders. Wald also lists various examples of the buddy cop television shows that followed his film, including DRAGNET (1951–1959), CAGNEY & LACEY (1981–1988) and MIAMI VICE (1984–1989). Other police story elements popularized by THE NAKED CITY involve tireless legwork on clues, the protracted police chase and the time law enforcement officials must waste with various crackpots who for whatever reason attempt to insert themselves into murder investigations.

According to Wald, at first Academy Award-winning Irish actor Barry Fitzgerald was uninterested in the part of Lieutenant Muldoon. Wald had to persuade him he would be effective in the role. The film's title was borrowed from photographer Arthur "Weegee" Fellig's first book NAKED CITY (1945). Wald insisted on the title in a conversation with producer Hellinger. Another interesting observation from Wald is that Hellinger's narration is directed at the fleeing criminal Garzah in the final act. As Hellinger advises the man responsible for multiple murders, one is reminded of the producer's good terms with known gangsters such as Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel and Dutch Schultz. For his efforts on THE NAKED CITY, Wald received an Academy Award nomination for Best Story.

Bonus content continues with a very insightful interview (28m 11s) with film scholar Dana Polan from 2006. A professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Polan is the author of numerous books in the field of film studies, including POWER AND PARANOIA: HISTORY, NARRATIVE, AND THE AMERICAN CINEMA, 1940-1950 (Columbia University Press, 1986) and THE BEGINNINGS OF THE U.S. STUDY OF FILM (UC Press, 2007). Polan breaks down THE NAKED CITY in terms of the American man's post-WWII place in a more regimented society. It is no accident the most noir component of the film, the murder of Dexter, transpires in the early going. What remains is the police procedural, which exudes ordered reassurance rather than classic noir chaos and cynicism. The policemen of THE NAKED CITY have a never-ending purpose given the nature of crime. There always will be new crime cases, just as additional paperwork piles up on an office worker's desk or new patients arrive at a hospital. While a man's workday may seem ordinary, he nonetheless should maintain a strong sense of purpose and worth. Along with that notion, it is implied the American worker can possess individuality, even eccentricities, as long as he works within the larger general system.

Also conducted in 2006 was an interview (26m 6s) with architect James Sanders, author of CELLULOID SKYLINE: NEW YORK AND THE MOVIES (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001). At the time of THE NAKED CITY's production, New York's Lower East Side was a mythic place, the birthplace of American culture. The incredible population density visible on the streets was captured around its peak. As televisions were added to American homes, the type of animated street life witnessed in THE NAKED CITY was coming to its conclusion. A strong observation from Sanders is the film's depiction of the huge city as a basically healthy environment. Bad things may happen, but those rarities are resolved swiftly. By the 1970s, police procedural films would make no suggestion that major cities were in good health.

Following a presentation of his splendid crime film RIFIFI (Du rififi chez les hommes, 1955) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2004, Jules Dassin reflected upon his career with Bruce Goldstein moderating (40m 45s). Dassin champions Mark Hellinger as a producer who stuck by his director at a time when studio loyalty was suspect ("blacklist was in the air"). After the premature death of Hellinger, Dassin was disappointed to see Hellinger's final production become the subject of studio interference. Also of interest is a stills gallery (5m 42s) full of posters, production stills and behind-the-scenes photos.

The Criterion packaging includes an essay by Luc Sante and production notes sent from Hellinger to Dassin in 1947 in regard to the final chase sequence.