NAKED CITY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 478, 20 August 1948, Page 28

NAKED CITY

| (Universal-International.) | AKED CITY, which was the last film made by the late Mark Hellinger, stars the city of New York, with Barry Fitzgerald as the chief supporting player and Hellinger himself as narrator-and New York walks off with the honours. In case this order of favouritism should lead the more perfervid admirers of Mr. Fitzgerald to imagine that Naked City is (to use an earnest phrase) Great Cinema, let me say at once that I didn’t mean that all. It’s not a great picture, but it is in many ways a good one, and better than the usual run-of-the-mill ninety-minute soporific. It’s good in spite of what Mr. Fitzgerald does-or, to be fair, what he is required to do. . That, I know, sounds harsh but_he comes of a noble company of actors and the sight of a former Abbey Theatre player clowning his way through one of the curmudgeon roles which Hol-ywood persists in hanging on him is not one which I can regard without misgivings. In a way, it’s like seeing Forbes-Robertson in a purple kilt and a curly walking-stick. This time he is Lieutenant Muldoon of the Homicide Squad, a character almost indistinguishable in voice and manner from our old friend Officer Crosby of the carbolic soap operas. Associated with Lieutenant Mu'doon is his young assistant, played by Don Taylor who is no worseand no better-than any one of a dozen reasonably personable young Hollywood males might have been. Among the other players there are a number of unfamiliar faces, but again no one performance which is particularly distin-guished-and one or two which might ‘we'l have been cut out altogether. It is, in short, not the acting which raises Naked City above the average, nor is the plot remarkable for its originality: it is a simple murder story, with a bit of jewel-thieving thrown in to provide a modicum of complication-quite a prosaic affair as these things go. Such freshness and vitality as the film has-and it has an encouraging share of both-derive from the manner in which the material has been handled. First of all there is the device of‘ the bridging narrative, spoken by Hellinger The lines are by turns simple and direct, sardonically humorous, and downright sentimental. Some of them are pure East Side in grammar and _ inflexion, some ponderously whimsical, but Hel!inger was himself a New Yorker and it is impossible not to be infected with the enthusiasm ‘and the gusto. which he shows in describing the city. For its own sake the commentary is interesting enough, but it serves a useful .dramatic purpose as well. It links the various episodes of the story, bridges the dull moments, s'ows or speeds the tempo of the action, and does succeed in giving one a hasty birdis-eye view of the sprawling city. He linger’s voice, however, is not the only interesting element in the soundtrack. Naked City opens with some appropriate background music, but this very soon gives way to the raucous indizenous noises of New York itself. Like

Call Northside 777 (Listener, 30/4/48) Hellingers film was made on _ the sidewalks of the city it depicts. Northside was remarkable mainly for this authenticity of physical setting and though city noises were used in that film to some extent, they were not employed as consistently or as strongly as Hellinger has used them. There is in fact no doubt that much of the local colour in Naked City has been slapped on simply out of an innocent love of local colour itself. Whether one accepts this or not is a matter of individual taste. I enjoyed it, for it was briskly done and there was no attempt to make the colours more attractive than natural, no ignoring of the greys, the drab tints, in favour of purple patches or high lights. There are shots of dawn over the Hudson and there are a'su pictures of squalid; dirty, littered streets; you hear the thin tinkie of a barfelorgan, then it is suddeniy drowned in the roar of street traffic cr the clatter of the Elevated railroad. Like the sound, the photography is strongly realistic-a straight rerort with very litt'e conscious art about it, but with the virtues of clarity and good timing which make American news-photo-graphy so vivid and eye stching Naked City is a whole’ world removed from the Belfast of Odd Man Out, and yet occasionally I found myself reminded of Carol Reed’s film. Both films are about manhunts, both are pictures which stress the impersona ity of the city organism, both show similar glimpses of low life. tn Odd Man Out the story moves to its climax with the inevitability of Greek tragedy, in Naked City the hunt pounds down the labyrinthine ways on the flat feet of precinct policemen. Hellinger has kept his story simple and therefore be'ievable. There are no heroics, there is no love-interest; attention is concentrated, if anywhere on the seamy side of life not (as someone put it) the come-up-and-see-me side. A good deal of publicity capital has been. made out of the fact that Naked City was actually made in New York, and that it is an Amefican documentary. That it should be considered in some ways audacious to make a film anywhere. but on the sets and under the klieg lamps of Hollywood indicates at least one of the intellectual impediments which keep the average American commercial film at its present low level. So far as the documentary claim is concerned, there is no doubt that He linger has learned much from documentary. but I thought Naked City (like Call Northside) came closer to the March of Time technique-in story as well as treatment.. Naked City isn’t bothered by flashbacks. It marches on from the beginning, through the middle and reaches the end, then stops. And that is what everv good film should da.

BAROMETER FAIR TO FINE: ‘Naked City." OVERCAST: ‘Secret Beyond the + Door."