A beautiful blonde model is murdered in her New York apartment. Lt. Dan Muldoon (Berry Fitzgerald) and detective Jimmy Halloran (Dan Taylor) are put on the case. It will lead to a string of jewelry robberies and to the nearly pathologically untruthful Frank Niles (Howard Duff) and his snooty fiancée Ruth Morrison (Dorothy Hart).
Critics tend to group The Naked City with Film Noirs, but it is not a Noir. It lacks the style, plot, and characters. It does have a voice-over, but a rather laidback, chatty one, not from the detective main character, but from the producer of the film, speaking as the producer; it is in that narration that the phrase âThere are eight million stories in the naked cityâ entered public discourse. This is a police procedural, which follows morally shining officers doing their duty. It was shot cheaply in washed-out hues to match the secretly shot street scenes (taken from hidden cameras while a street juggler and political speaker were used to attract crowds)âyet somehow managed to pickup a very undeserved Oscar for B&W cinematography (while Key Largo, The Big Clock, and Brighton Rock were all ignored in the category).
The story reminds me of the best of ’60s TV cop shows. Actually everything reminds me of the best of ’60s TV cop shows, including pacing, dialog, action, and acting (solid from the leads, overly broad from the supporting cast). And since you are likely to see this film on television for the same cost as an episode of a series, that pans out on a cost basis. In 1948, those shows didnât exist yet, so call this the progenitor of a sub-genre. It also means that thereâs not a lot of drama or excitement, or twists or surprises, and absolutely no emotion. Muldoon and Halloran are fine for an hour and a half, but when the credits show up, theyâre gone and Iâm not going to miss them. They did there job and solved the crime. And thereâs no theme beyond crime is bad. It really is that simple.
The filmâs gimmick is that it didnât use soundstages. Everything was shot in New York, in real buildings or on real streets. This was rare at the time, and got people from New York very excited. The photography may not have been anything special, but it did give a realistic look at the city.
The Naked City is a film I could neither love nor hate. It doesnât seem to require that much concern. I didnât mind sitting through it but I canât think of any reason to look it up again, and unless you have a fetish for 1948 New York, I canât give you a reason to either.