Jules Dassin's The Naked City is, visually, a masterpiece of noir film making. Dassin, who also directed Night and the City, the film that gave this site its name, uses real locations in New York City in order to create an experience that immerses the viewer in its world. From shooting on location, Dassin is capable of creating stark, beautifully composed shots. It seems to be no coincide that Dassin's two best films both contain the word "city" it their titles. Both Night and the City and The Naked City make use of real world locations, London in Night and the City, and because of this, these locations become more than a backdrop. The most important relationship in the noir genre is the relationship between its characters and the city in which they live, and as Don Taylor's Detective Halloran combs New York in search of suspects and evidence, he wanders between pawn shops and apartment buildings, hoofing it through the streets, questioning witnesses, these become the film's most important scenes. New York becomes whole, an interactive setting, where his travel between places is more important than his destination. These shots are captivating in their reality, separating The Naked City from its peers.
It shouldn't be surprising that the scenes are so effective. The film is inspired by, and shares its name with, a classic book of photography by news photographer Weegee published in 1945. Within Weegee's book, his dark, often strikingly violent work, paints New York as a dangerous place, a morally ambiguous world of thieves and murderers, serving as a template for the film, a suitable companion to the film noir movement as a whole.
Though the film's visual style remains wholly within the genre's parameters, as well as its story, police searching for the murderer of a playgirl, it takes several departures from the norm. It's heroes are not the hard-boiled detectives of Humphrey Bogart films, nor are they the anti-heroes of films such as the aforementioned Night and the City. Instead, they are the affable Irish Lieutenant Muldoon, played by Barry Fitzgerald, and Detective Halloran, an upbeat family man. Now that's not to say that duty bound police officers aren't stock characters in film noir, but they are never the main characters. Especially in a story that also contains an almost sympathetic thief, an older victim being used by said thief, and a femme fatale with whom they are both infatuated. In a more textbook genre film, these would be the people on which the film focuses. In The Naked City, though, the femme fatale's death begins the film, and the older man, Dr. Stoneman, played by House Jameson, doesn't really appear in an important scene until the end. The Naked City essentially takes what would be the last half an hour in a normal film noir and stretches to an hour and a half.
This brave turn actually helps to separate the film from other noirs. The characters who the viewers follow throughout are happy and intelligent. Writers Albert Maltz and Malvin Wald, who wrote the original story on which the film was based, fill the hour and a half with a detailed look at the procedures that Muldoon and Halloran use to capture the killer, which adds realism and insight to the film. It helps that the characters don't dumb down the police terminology that they use. Details such as this help the inventive cinematography create a believable world, a film version of New York that actually feels true in its own way.
