Directed by Fritz Lang
Written by Casey Robinson
From the novel The Bloody Spur by Charles Einstein
Cinematography by Ernest Lazlo
Edited by Gene Fowler, Jr.
Music by Herschel Burke Gilbert
Starring
Dana Andrews
Ida Lupino
Vincent Price
Rhonda Fleming
George Sanders
Howard Duff
Thomas Mitchell
Review by William D. Tucker.
While the City Sleeps opens with a creepy sequence in which a serial killer gains access to a woman’s apartment. We see the perpetrator full-on. This is not a whodunit. He’s a delivery man for a corner grocery in New York City. His job gives him access to people’s homes. He’s killed before, he’ll kill again. He preys on women, exclusively. We get a first person murder sequence of the woman we just met. We’re seemingly set up for a character portrait of a twisted psychopath and the hunt for him that will no doubt ensue. We get those things, more or less, but they end up being told from the perspective of the employees of a media empire who compete with each other to transform atrocity into profitable front page headlines. It’s this perspective that makes While the City Sleeps modestly intriguing.
Because it’s not a mystery. We know who the perpetrator is from the jump. This puts the emphasis on how and why questions as opposed to inquiries into who. It engages with the how a little more substantially than the why.
It’s not much of a character study of psychopathy. We quickly come to understand that the killer targets women. Sure, there’s some pop psychology prattle offered up to explain his works, but in 2024 misogyny is widely understood to be a motive force all on its own. 1956 was, I guess, a simpler time, but this movie more or less presents a predator who would make sense yesterday or today. He’s a creep. He’s dangerous. He’s also kind of a bore.
It’s not much of a police procedural. The cops are on the case, but we basically interact with them from the journalists’ side of things. So no super detective stuff. No reassuring Law and Order routines. What is interesting is how While the City Sleeps depicts the porous flow of intel from cop to reporter. Everything hinges on insider contacts. There’s an unofficial yet normalized understanding that the public desires both the reassurance that the police are on the case and the lurid come-on of true crime infotainment on a daily schedule plus extra editions when something dramatic breaks. The cops and the reporters have worked out the give and take. Some journalists get favored access, some don’t.
It’s not much of a thriller save for three key sequences-which are efficiently set up and paid off. This mostly ends up as a character drama about the employees of the media empire, and how each one chooses to chase the big scoop. There’s a not entirely convincing gimmick built around the death of the big boss of the media empire. The big boss’s wastrel son takes over and pits the division heads against one another to drive up productivity. This struck me as superfluous: a New York City media operation is already going to hit the ground running to win the scoop on a local serial killer saga. Which is what happens, anyways. The wastrel son element is, well, wasted.
It’s not much in the visuals department. It’s not terrible. But it is directed by Fritz Lang of Metropolis and M among other masterworks. While the City Sleeps can’t compare to Metropolis in terms of city visuals, nor is its creepy killer near as memorable as Peter Lorre’s depraved predator in M. It’s certainly competent and concrete, nothing too arty or conceptual I guess, but it lacks atmosphere.
While the City Sleeps works best in how it depicts a media machine responding to an extreme series of crimes. The true fascination here is with how the different employees of a media empire work at cross-purposes even though they’re all part of the same outfit. But this is a modest achievement at best. The story loses momentum a good ten or twelve minutes before the finish. The ending is a betrayal of all that has been established about the cutthroat gamesmanship within the media conglomerate. At the last it tries to sentimentalize what has throughout been depicted as a hard-boiled zero sum game, thus shitcanning its last bit of credibility. While the City Sleeps is far from the worst thing ever put to film, but it's off-puttingly mediocre for the talents involved.
