The Naked City

The Naked City (New York) is a 1948 film noir directed by Jules Dassin, produced by Mark Hellinger and stared Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Don Taylor and Ted de Corsia.  In addition to producing, Hellinger also did the narration for the movie.  Sadly, he died of a heart attack at forty-four years of age shortly before the movie was released.  

The Naked City won two Academy Awards:  Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (William Daniels) and Best Editing (Paul Weatherwax).

On one level, The Naked City is a police drama showing in almost documentary style the mundane minute by minute steps of a murder investigation.  Jean Dexter, a former model, is found dead in her bathtub.  Who done it?  Detective Lieutenant Dan Muldoon (Fitzgerald) and Detective Jimmy Halloran (Taylor) are assigned to the case. 

Discovered in Dexter's address book, the police question Frank Niles (Duff), who claims only a legitimate business relationship with her.  However, Muldoon and Halloran discover Niles has no legitimate business.  In reality Dexter and Miles conspired to steal jewelry from wealthy New Yorkers.  

Dexter enticed Doctor Stoneman to give her information as to when his friends would be at parties he hosted so actual burglars, Willie Garzah (de Corsia) and an associate, could rob jewelry from their unprotected homes.  Niles would then sell the jewelry and divide the money among the conspirators.  

However, Garzah gets greedy and kills Dexter.  Later, he tries to kill Niles.  By following Niles, the police discover he sold stolen jewelry.  To help himself, Niles implicates Stoneman and the robber ("It was Garzah").  In an exciting conclusion, Garzah is discovered living on the lower East Side of Manhattan and is cornered by the police on the nearby Williamsburg Bridge.

In one poignant scene, Dexter's parents (from out of town) come to the New York City Mortuary to identify her body.  The mother before the identification is very angry and says, "All these young girls, so crazy to be with the bright lights.  No bright lights for her now, is there?  What about us?  Scandal!  My husband's a gardener.  He works for a banker, a highly respectable gentleman.  He'll get fired now.  I hate her.  I hate her.  She even had to change her name.  I do hate her.  I do.  I warned her.  A million times I warned her.  I hate her for what she's done to us."  

But when she sees her murdered daughter's body, her attitude suddenly changes.  "My baby.  Oh, my baby."  And the tears of a distraught mother flow.      

Secondarily, The Naked City is "a story of the city itself."  It was filmed on location in New York, rare at the time.  The actors "played out their roles on the streets, in the apartment houses, in the skyscrapers of New York...A great many thousands of New Yorkers played out their roles also (unbeknownst to them).  It was the city as it (was in the summer of 1947).  Hot summer pavements, the children at play, the buildings in their naked stone, the people without makeup."

At the end, the narrator sums up The Naked City.  "It's one o'clock in the morning ... and this is the city and these are the lights that a child born to the name of Victoria (Jean Dexter) hungered for.  Her passion has been played out now.  Her name, her face, her history were worth five cents a day for six days (as written in the newspapers).  Tomorrow, a new case will hit the headlines.  Yet, some will remember Jean Dexter.  She won't be entirely forgotten, not entirely, not altogether.  There are eight million stories in the naked city.  This has been one of them."