Now seems the best time to admit that, for the past three entries, this blog has been living a lie. Yes, it may seem like a music blog. It was, and it still is, but as it turns out my opinions on other things are so far-reaching and vital that they can’t be contained to one subject (seriously). With this in mind, I’ll be writing not only about music but also film, books, television and any delicious cakes that I may have eaten.
On this note, I’ll mention that I went into The Naked City expecting two things: a classic “New York” movie and a solid, if not exceptional, film noir. The film delivers on the first point but not so much on the latter.
When I place New York in quotes like this I’m referring to the kind of film that not only takes the city for it’s setting, but, like Mean Streets or Manhattan, exists entirely within an idea of it, with the story and the characters as almost secondary figures, byproducts of the mysterious essence the filmmaker is trying to capture. The Naked City is not only one of the first films to push this kind of idealized image, it takes the idea further than most.
This dedication to a full-scale representation of the city ends up creating a beautiful snapshot but also a dangerously splintered film. Really, there are two films here. One is a non-fiction documentary on New York - the outer shell which enfolds the second - a slightly undercooked noir that takes place within this defictionalized city.
Much attention is paid to the documentary aspect. The film begins with an extended explanation of the techniques used to capture the feel of actual city life – cameras placed behind one-way mirrors and in vans, unwitting extras, stolen shots – all of which serve to capture the city in the same context that a nature film might. This is a film that is groundbreaking for it’s time, it knows it and it wants us to know it, which may explain the overeager misstep of burying the film’s actual story so deeply that it becomes of auxiliary importance.
This story, which we finally get to after a gorgeous run-through of the city at night, is by the books pulp – a dead beauty, some faceless toughs and a few puzzled but confident cops. The narration (which is saddled with the awkward task of telling us a fake story inside of a real one) acknowledges the everyday nature of the crime to show us how it fits into the nightly routine we have just been shown. Basically, to accommodate the documentary aspect, we’re given as normal a story as possible, which is meant to further emphasize realism but gives a humdrum feeling from the start.
The same goes for the police officers, who are meant to be commendably average but instead come across flat and stereotypically sketched. Most prominently, there’s the Irish detective (grizzled, over-experienced, bubbling with old-world gentility) and the rookie cop (beautiful wife, cute kid, house in Queens). The film seems to want us to embrace these characters in the same way it wants us to embrace the anonymous lives it peeks in on every so often, but in their paved over normalcy they somehow come across less than the woman hanging her laundry or the kids playing in the street. Against this backdrop of real images of actual lives they stand out as pulp tropes and little more.
While I’m harping on the negative, it seems necessary to note that, despite its reputation as a classic of the genre, The Naked City isn’t really even a noir. First of all, it’s way too bright. The femme fatale is killed off before the movie even begins. The line between the good and bad guys is rigidly defined. It’s even cheerful. What it really is, then, is a sub-par police procedural with extraordinarily good outdoor footage.
Judging by the quality and demeanor of Dassin's other films (think of the brutal closing section of Rififi) it’s probably safe to blame these shortcomings on producer and narrator Mark Hellinger. Hellinger was a journalist who specialized in heart-tuggingly sentimental people pieces, and that shows here, in the way everyone but the scantily featured villains seems to operate around a shared kernel of inherent goodness. This seems anathema for a supposed noir, and any sense of grit is lost without the chance for our heroes to get their hands at least a little dirty.
On the other hand, Hellinger can be credited for the success of the realism the movie attempts to put across. It runs off a deep-rooted populism, presumably his doing, which makes the film memorable as a celebration of a city and the people who live in it. The fact that a murder exists at the center of the story doesn’t serve to cast doubt on the beauty of the place or to paint it in a darker light; it’s only a device that allows us to experience a few of “the 8 million stories in the Naked City.” This may be where the real problem lies. The film doesn’t seem too interested in the murder, only as far as its red herring status leads us to its true purpose of illuminating New York from the ground level. Yet without the murder at its core there’s no reason for the film to exist. This is a strange dilemma, and it leaves a fractured, although still entertaining film.
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