- While Jules Dassin's The Naked City isn't the first documentary-style film noir, an honor that (as far as I am aware) belongs to The House on 92nd Street, it is the best film from that subgenre that I've seen to date. Some of that success can be attributed to the immense charisma of its two lead actors, Barry Fitzgerald and Don Taylor. As Detective Lieutenant Muldoon, the intensely Irish Fitzgerald is the ideal detective, single-minded and dedicated, whose eyes see much further than his diminutive stature would suggest. Halloran (Taylor), on the other hand, is a fledgling cop whose sore feet are a testament to his devotion to the force, which in turn is only exceeded by his devotion to his family. Then, of course, there's that naked city itself.
- When I say that this film was shot on location, I mean that it tries at every possible turn to show images of real places and people. That's not intended as a criticism, either -- the city shots are as good as any I've seen from that era, effectively creating a time capsule of late 1940's New York that still manages to impress. Oh, and some of the shots depict the circumstances surrounding the brutal murder of a young woman. It's the job of Muldoon and Halloran to find out who killed this mostly well-liked former model, which they accomplish by running down every possible lead, no matter how unpromising. This includes interviewing the woman's helpful friend Ruth (Dorothy Hart), Ruth's painfully dishonest fiance (Howard Duff), the apartment cleaning woman (Virginia Mullen), the deceased woman's parents (Adelaide Klein and Grover Burgess), and even a delusional older woman (Jean Adair) who comes running into the police station with psychic predictions every time there's a story in the paper.
- Aside from the outstanding urban cinematography, what distinguishes The Naked City from most of its contemporary semi-documentaries is, strangely enough, its departures from realism. In films like The House on 92nd Street, the devotion to authenticity (or the FBI's version thereof, at least) often extended to casting real agents and police officers as some of the major characters. While this approach can succeed in rare instances, it more often than not serves primarily to highlight the value of acting lessons. In contrast, this film's actors are completely captivating, while still managing to appear authentic enough for my taste. The film's ending, too, is more enjoyably Hitchcockian than merely plausible when the culprit, a colorful harmonica-playing wrestler (Ted de Corsia), climbs up The Williamsburg Bridge to escape the police. "Not a slice of life, but a piece of cake," Hitch would have said. Regardless, it would be remiss of me to conclude this review without the famous quote (delivered by the film's chatty narrator): "There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them."
