In this movie the star is New York City at the height of its prominence as the largest city of the most powerful country on the planet.\u00a0 The tagline of the movie is \u201cThere are eight million stories in the Naked City.\u00a0 This is one of them.\u201d\u00a0 And almost every shot of the film highlights the sights and sounds of New York.\u00a0 Everything from the crowded subway cars and crowded streets to dizzying vistas on the tops of buildings and the towers of the Williamsburg Bridge.<\/p>\n
The story begins with the late-night murder of Jean Dexter, a pretty blonde model.\u00a0 It is followed by one of the two murderers killing his partner for being too soft-hearted.<\/p>\n
The murder of Jean Dexter falls into the lap of police Lt. Dan Muldoon played with his best Irish brogue by Barry Fitzgerald.\u00a0 Assisted by detective Jimmy Halloran played by Don Taylor they run down leads until they find Frank Niles, played by Howard Duff.\u00a0 Every word coming out of Niles\u2019 mouth, including \u201cand and but\u201d is a lie.\u00a0 And when they find out that he is engaged to Jean\u2019s close friend Ruth Morrison but that Ruth doesn\u2019t even know that Niles was a close friend of Dexter they know they\u2019ve found their connection.\u00a0 At every step Niles shows himself to be tied to the murder and to a jewel robbery ring.\u00a0 But at the same time all evidence clears him of Jean\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n
Finally, the clues add up to the fact that Jean Dexter and Frank Niles were the brains behind the jewelry theft ring.\u00a0 They hired two burglars and used information from the husband of a society matron to rob the houses of the wealthy when it was known that they would be at a party.\u00a0 But finally, the burglars decided to cut Jean out of the picture by murdering and robbing her.\u00a0 Under threat that he would be indicted as an accessory to murder Niles confesses and provides the names of the two burglars.<\/p>\n
The climax of the movie is a manhunt and a shootout between the police and the murderer while he is cornered at the top of one of the towers of the Williamsburg Bridge, hundreds of feet in the air.<\/p>\n
In a lot of ways, the movie is a standard police procedural.\u00a0 But there are enough secondary players to round out the story in a satisfying way.\u00a0 We meet detective Halloran\u2019s wife and young son and hope with him that he won\u2019t have to obey his wife and spank his son for crossing Northern Boulevard by himself.\u00a0 We meet Jean Dexter\u2019s parents and watch as the mother goes from declaring her hatred for her prodigal daughter to crying over her \u201cbaby\u201d and hugging Jean\u2019s cold dead body in the morgue.\u00a0 We even meet the murderer\u2019s Lower East Side neighbors who know him as the friendly harmonica playing guy that all the kids like.<\/p>\n
This is not a great movie.\u00a0 It\u2019s a good one.\u00a0 I recommend it as what it is, an interesting police story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In this movie the star is New York City at the height of its prominence as the largest city of the most powerful country on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,238,237],"tags":[3462,3463,1238,3464,43,38,1355],"class_list":["post-17008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-classic-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-barry-fitzgerald","tag-don-taylor","tag-hollywood-golden-era","tag-howard-duff","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews"],"yoast_head":"\n