Naked City - Criterion Collection
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Barry Fitzgerald, Don Taylor, Dorothy Hart, Frank Conroy, Howard DuffBrand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 96 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-03-20
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Naked City - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: Mark Hellinger Presents New York
Summary: 5 Stars
Mark Hellinger was one of the most popular syndicated columnists to ever write about his home base of New York City. In the forties he decided to move into the ranks of movie producers as he signed on with Universal and established himself as a stellar attraction in the new area as well.
Hellinger began with a low budget sleeper triumph that has become a reigning film noir classic with the 1946 release "The Killers." Not only was the film, directed by noir giant Robert Siodmak, a gigantic success. In the film Hellinger launched no less than three great stars in Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner and Edmond O'Brien.
"Naked City" was Hellinger's second and regrettably last effort before his death. The star was in many ways the city where he had been born and raised and achieved fame, New York City. It is Hellinger's voice one hears serving as narrator, describing the city and the developing story with succinct realism.
Ted de Corsia and Tom Pedi, two character-acting regulars noted for noir and crime drama appearances, also turn in fine efforts. De Corsia, in his customary fashion, is cast as a tough villain who plays a major role in the film's resolution. Pedi, often cast as a gangster, plays a police detective this time.
The film is a testimonial to great semi-documentary filmmaking. It stars Barry Fitzgerald and Don Taylor as two Irish cops named Muldoon and Halloran. Fitzgerald four years earlier copped an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor playing a veteran Irish priest breaking in younger priest Bing Crosby in "Going My Way." In this film Fitzgerald breaks in young and dedicated fellow officer Taylor, who would soon be playing Elizabeth Taylor's husband to be in "Father of the Bride," where he endeavors to endear himself to future father in law Spencer Tracy.
Fitzgerald and Taylor sparkle as a team. Viewers get the feel that they know each other well and work together with camaraderie and the mutual desire to serve the public. Fitzgerald as the canny veteran seeks to impart knowledge to the younger man while also respecting his insights as someone seeing things from a fresher and newer perspective.
Jules Dassin directed "Naked City" just prior to leaving America for London after the tragic Hollywood Ten purge began. One of the writers of "The Naked City" was Albert Maltz, who was one of the Hollywood Ten. Dassin uses his New York location brilliantly just as he would use London in the same way in the 1950 film noir drama "Night and the City."
The team of Hellinger and Dassin was so determined to get things right and show New York City as it exists by day and is lived by its citizenry sans glitz that it was shot entirely there without studio interiors. Some of the best candid shots occurred with the cameraman shooting from inside a truck so the locals would be captured as they actually were with supreme spontaneity.
The team of Hellinger and Dassin was so determined to get things right and show New York City as it exists by day and is lived by its citizenry sans glitz that it was shot entirely there without studio interiors. Some of the best candid shots occurred with the cameraman shooting from inside a truck so the locals would be captured as they actually were with supreme spontaneity.
Ted de Corsia and Tom Pedi, two character-acting regulars noted for noir and crime drama appearances, also turn in fine efforts. De Corsia, in his customary fashion, is cast as a tough villain who plays a major role in the film's resolution. Pedi, often cast as a gangster, plays a police detective this time.
Hellinger's admirable ability for discerning talent and stories left us begging for more following his untimely death. His next project, which he helped get off the ground at Universal, was the tremendous film noir hit "Crisscross," which has also become a classic. This 1949 gem starred Hellinger's leading man from "The Killers" Burt Lancaster with Universal's top female star of the period, Yvonne De Carlo, playing the ruthless femme fatale he cannot get out of his system, even after divorcing her.
It had been Hellinger's idea to make Los Angeles the photographic star and vortex for "Crisscross" just as New York City had served such a valuable purpose in "Naked City." Robert Siodmak, who had earlier directed "The Killers," carried out that objective with consummate fidelity.
Summary of Naked City - Criterion Collection
"There are eight million stories in the Naked City," as the narrator immortally states at the close of this breathtakingly vivid film?and this is one of them. Master noir craftsman Jules Dassin and newspaperman-cum-producer Mark Hellinger?s dazzling police procedural was shot entirely on location in New York City, as influenced by Italian neorealism as American crime fiction. A double Academy Award?winner, The Naked City remains a benchmark for naturalism in noir, living and breathing in the promises and perils of the Big Apple, from its lowest depths to its highest skyscrapers.Similar DVD Movies
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