DIRECTOR: Jules Dassin
PRODUCER: Mark Hellinger
PRODUCTION CO: Universal
SCREENPLAY: Albert Maltz, Malvin Wald
​PHOTOGRAPHY: William H Daniels
EDITOR: Paul Weatherwax
MUSIC: Miklós Rózsa, Frank Skinner
WITH: Barry Fitzgerald (Lt Dan Muldoon), Howard Duff (Frank Niles), Dorothy Hart (Ruth Morrison), Don Taylor (Detective Jimmy Halloran), Frank Conroy (Captain Donahue), Ted de Corsia (Willie Garzah), House Jameson (Dr Lawrence Stoneman), Anne Sargent (Mrs Halloran), Adelaide Klein (Mrs Paula Batory), Grover Burgess (Mr Batory), Tom Pedi (Detective Perelli), Enid Markey (Mrs Edgar Hylton), Walter Burke (Pete Backalis), Virginia Mullen (Martha Swenson) 

REVIEWS

“‘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, The Naked City, was shot on location in New York. As influenced by Italian neorealism as by American crime fiction, this double Academy Award winner 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.” 

— Criterion

“Made in the wake of the second world war, when mainstream Hollywood was absorbing the techniques of documentary and the lessons of Italian neorealism and producers were still happily employing openly leftwing film-makers, The Naked City is invariably identified as a classic. But if so, what sort of classic? …

​Inspired by Walter Ruttmann’s classic 1927 documentary, Berlin, Symphony of a Great City, the hero of The Naked City is New York itself, forever encapsulated during the hot summer of 1947. Its citizens are the unknowing supporting cast. The film deliberately forgoes the noir director’s opportunities to dramatically frame the scenes and Hellinger provides a knowing, intimate, folksy commentary on the action that domesticates the narrative and deliberately undermines the suspense… This is what makes the film both a landmark and some sort of masterpiece.”

– Philip French, Guardian

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Whanganui   
Monday, 27 March, 7.00pm

​Nelson
Tuesday, 02 May, 6.00pm

Hamilton
Monday, 15 May, 6.30pm

Dunedin
Wednesday, 31 May, 7.30pm

​Auckland   
Monday, 12 June, 6:15pm

​Canterbury     
Monday, 26 June, 7.00pm

Palmerston North 
Wednesday, 19 July, 6.00pm 

Timaru
Tuesday, 08 August, 6.00pm

Wellington     
Monday, 27 November, 6.15pm

NEW YORK ON SCREEN >> ​ ​