Review of The Naked City (1948) by Devon B — 17 Feb 2012

Frank Niles might be one of the dumbest "conmen" to ever grace the silver screen. He's a horrible, unconvincing liar who is caught almost instantly in every lie he tells. It's a shame he has to run up against lieutenant Muldoon and Detective Halloran. Muldoon is a cool character. An irish cop with decades of experience, he breaks down the stories of big liars like Niles like crackers in soup. It seems a model has been murdered, and there's a matter of a stolen box of jewelry from the dead woman's apartment. It adds up to a ring of conspiracy and the hunt for a harmonica-playing wrestler. And dumb Niles with his cheap alibies is right in the middle of it.

As the film opens, narrator Mark Hellinger tells us this film is unlike any we have ever seen. Not shot on a studio sound stage or back lot, The Naked City was filmed on the actual streets of New York City. As good as it sounds on paper, 1948 microphones and recording equipment had difficulty picking up the actors' lines over the noise of the busy city streets. The easy solution, in addition to doing overdubs later in the studio, was to have a narration. This gives the film a certain aire of authenticity (it's been called a "semi-documentary"). There is a gritty realism on display here that one doesn't normally find in the noir films of this period (I wonder just how influential this film was to Jack Webb when he was creating the "Dragnet" series).