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the audience applauded

Best movie of this year hands down!

Absolutely Fantastic

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

"While the City Sleeps" may be Lang's second favorite U.S. film but I still think it's rather dull. There is very little action — even the climactic chase through the subway is not all that exciting — and a great deal of talk. The characters never fully engage the interest and very little suspense is worked up despite a two-pronged plot, combining the thriller with "Executive Suite".Dana Andrews plays in his usual glum style, James Craig is even glummer, Sanders and Mitchell give their usual characterizations, while Ida Lupino overplays the femme fatale bit and Rhonda Fleming makes a good-looking but unconvincing adulteress. Barrymore overplays as usual. The only surprise and only performance to make any impression is Vincent Price as a callow newspaper heir.Amazingly, after Moonfleet which is superlatively composed, Lang handles the wide screen very flaccidly, the loose framing matching the lack of tautness in the plot. Most of the lighting is flat too, though an occasional shot of rich contrast shows what the film might have been had Lang been at the top of his form. Production values are also no more than average, with the same unattractive sets being used again and again. Music and other technical credits are equally undistinguished.

I don't think that While the City Sleeps is among Fritz Lang's best, like M or Metropolis. However, despite a rather tepid final chase sequence and Rhonda Fleming coming across as rather bland, it is an interesting film. It looks good, with the cinematography excellent even in the final chase, and the score has some hauntingly atmospheric themes. The dialogue is arch and sharp, with a cynical yet involving tone, and the story even in the more talky moments, and there are many of those, is compelling with some tension. Lang's direction is accomplished as are the cast. Dana Andrews is solid in the lead, while Ida Lupino oozes sex appeal and Vincent Price is wonderfully snide and unprincipled. George Sanders brings an oily if not exactly subtle nature to his role, Thomas Mitchell is again memorable and there is also a menacing performance from John Barrymore. Overall, a solid and interesting film, though not the best work that everybody here has done. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Fritz Lang's personal favorite of all his films is, unfortunately, not his best, but he adds a cynical twist to the familiar story of a psychopath pursued by a headline-hungry press by showing more sympathy for the Freudian torments of the killer than for the scheming newsmen out to apprehend him. No one is completely innocent, least of all the supposedly white-hatted journalists, who would rather compete for personal kudos than bring a serial killer to justice: sharks in a feeding frenzy exhibit better ethics. Goodness prevails, in the guise of square-jawed hero Dana Andrews, but the film is sparked more by the presence of Vincent Price as the Machiavellian, milquetoast media tycoon who exploits 'the lipstick murders', and by Ida Lupino as a gossip column queen willing to sell her soul to the highest bidder. The actress couldn't have had much choice about her role: in film noir women were usually relegated to playing good girls or tough cookies, and the former position was already filled.

Media mogul Amos Kyne dies at the inception of a juicy item about a sex killer designated the Lipstick Killer. Amos orders his newspaper chief to hustle all out with that story. Amos's megacorp domain is comprised of a major newspaper, a television station, and a wire news service. It's bequeathed to his singular beneficiary, his pariah son Vincent Price, who hits the ground running to establish that he's not his father's imbecile offspring by devising a new top executive position to act as his man Friday and run the whole enterprise, and grants the candidacy to be among the city editor played with Thomas Mitchell's infectious presence, the head of the wire service played with George Sanders' Transatlantic adaptation of his unabashedly British persona, and the photo editor played with James Craig's old-fashioned American masculinity. The plotting Sanders and the factotum Mitchell egotistically vie for the job and struggle to crack the headline murder case, feeling that the one who solves that case will get the job. At the same time, Craig is having an affair with Walter's eye-popping wife Rhonda Fleming, and hopes to get the job through her seductive wiles. Pulitzer-winning reporter and the station's commentator, played by the always appealing laid-back Dana Andrews, is unwilling to get involved, but after all does and signs on to help his close friend Mitchell.Fritz Lang's 22nd English-language film, which itself, interestingly, is a conglomeration of film noir, psychological thriller and sociopolitical drama, is a complete observation of the modern media. It applies to a media empire which merges newspapers, wire services, photography and television. All of these come under acute and generally cynical analysis in this film. The utter notion that so many different media are all amalgamated in one company scares this film's forever socially concerned director Fritz Lang, who sees the makings of fascistic tyranny here, something of which his own first-hand experience surely made him particularly wary.The K symbol that is everywhere in While the City Sleeps as the insignia of a media empire. One recalls that in real life, the CBS eye was part of the first successful corporate logo and corporate identity crusade of any modern corporation. It is intriguing that Lang, with his eye consistently scanning for the cutting edge of communications, would give the media empire in his film such a syndicated characteristic. Real corporate media offices look significantly flashier than the dishwater headquarters of the media in Lang's film.The media show up in other, more esoteric ways, as well. The bar is rife with photographs, ostensibly of celebrities who've stopped off at it. The photo-viewer maneuvered by Ida Lupino, who plays Sanders' star journalist with detached intensity, evinces Lang's strong interest in new media. Even the car chase at the end of the film involves a car knocking over a mailbox, part of the broadcasting framework of contemporary civilization.Somehow the killer, who is psychologically troubled and cannot help himself, is treated in a more sensitive depiction than any of the cutthroat newspaper people. He is played by John Drew Barrymore in a vivacious and edgy performance. He is sporadically seen, but with intrigue as we almost always see him alone, and even once at his home with his mother, a wrenchingly sad scene. Even the story's apparently most upright character, Dana Andrews, utilizes his girlfriend to get what he wants, which is not necessarily worlds apart from what Craig's character does. The essence of the story is seen through the glass-walled newspaper offices and all the deceitful day-to-day goings-on there are disclosed, as Lang secures his most severe reckoning on the indiscriminately aggressive newspaper people who could so easily forfeit their dignity for control, fanfare and affluence.