While the City Sleeps (1956) [DVD]

Excellent cynical noir from Fritz Lang, 14 Dec 2010

SCARLET STREET aside, WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS may well be Fritz Lang’s best American film. Inheriting a media empire after his father dies, his son (Vincent Price) announces his intention to turn over the directorial reins to whoever breaks the story of the notorious “Lipstick Killer”, a homicidal, woman hating maniac (John Drew Barrymore Jr., Drew’s daddy) still at large. The film’s characters, save one, are a nest of vipers. Each looking out for his or her own interests, ethics be damned. George Sanders sends his mistress (Ida Lupino) to pump information from a reporter (Dana Andrews) even if it means bedding him, James Craig engaged in an affair with Price’s duplicitous wife (Rhonda Fleming) uses her to advance his chances while Dana Andrews uses his unwilling fiancee (Sally Forrest) as a decoy for the killer. Only Forrest and possibly Thomas Mitchell as the chief editor seem to have any recognizable ethics. Lang keeps the potential for a bombastic thriller by shooting it in a semi-documentary style using Oscar winner Ernest Laszlo’s noir-ish B&W cinematography to give it a more subdued look. With Howard Duff, Mae Marsh and Vladimir Sokoloff.

The British import DVD from Indigo is a nice full frame transfer. The film was shot full frame (Lang disliked the wide screen format) and blown up for SuperScope wide screen in theatres.

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while the city sleeps dvd, 12 Oct 2010

By 

G. M. Crosthwaite “mardycross” (england) –

  

A very pleasant surprise…….Picture Quality is good with a reasonably sharp picture but no restoration has been done leaving picture speckling such as dots and dashes……however in my opinion this is not too bad and have seen much worse for example on Warner Archive releases . The film is certainly in the top 10 best Film Noirs ever made and is a very good movie indeed . EXTRAS include Theatrical Trailer , pressbook gallery and Poster AND ENGLISH SUB-TITLES only are INCLUDED for H.O.H . HIGHLY RECOMMENDED .

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