Jules Dassin

The Naked City

The Naked City

“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.

Film Info

  • United States
  • 1948
  • 96 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.37:1
  • English
  • Spine #380

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration by TLEFilms Film Restoration & Preservation Services, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Audio commentary from 1996 featuring screenwriter Malvin Wald
  • Interview with film scholar Dana Polan
  • Interview with author James Sanders (Celluloid Skyline) on the film’s New York locations
  • Footage of director Jules Dassin from a 2004 appearance at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
  • Stills gallery
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by author and critic Lucy Sante and production notes sent from producer Mark Hellinger to Dassin in 1947

    Cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang

Purchase Options

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration by TLEFilms Film Restoration & Preservation Services, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Audio commentary from 1996 featuring screenwriter Malvin Wald
  • Interview with film scholar Dana Polan
  • Interview with author James Sanders (Celluloid Skyline) on the film’s New York locations
  • Footage of director Jules Dassin from a 2004 appearance at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
  • Stills gallery
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by author and critic Lucy Sante and production notes sent from producer Mark Hellinger to Dassin in 1947

    Cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang
The Naked City
Cast
Barry Fitzgerald
Lieutenant Dan Muldoon
Howard Duff
Frank Niles
Dorothy Hart
Ruth Morrison
Don Taylor
Jimmy Halloran
Frank Conroy
Captain Donahue
Ted de Corsia
Willie Garzah
House Jameson
Dr. Stoneman
Anne Sargent
Mrs. Halloran
Adelaide Klein
Mrs. Batory
Grover Burgess
Mr. Batory
Tom Pedi
Detective Perelli
Enid Markey
Mrs. Edgar Hylton
Credits
Director
Jules Dassin
Producer
Mark Hellinger
Screenplay
Albert Maltz
Screenplay
Malvin Wald
Story by
Malvin Wald
Cinematography
William Daniels
Music
Miklós Rózsa
Music
Frank Skinner
Art direction
John F. DeCuir
Edited by
Paul Weatherwax

Current

The Naked City: New York Plays Itself
The Naked City: New York Plays Itself

In 1945 Arthur Fellig, known as Weegee, a canny and gifted tabloid newspaper photographer, did something unprecedented: he assembled some of his best shots, of corpses and fires and arrests and crowds and spectacles, and made them into a book, publis

By Lucy Sante

Jules Dassin, 1911–2008
Jules Dassin, 1911–2008
As a generation of artists passes, the deaths often seem to come eerily close together, amplifying their individual achievements. In the past couple of weeks, we’ve lost The Naked City screenwriter Malvin Wald, then the incomparable Richard Widmark…

By Issa Clubb

Walkers in the City: Jules Dassin and Bruce Goldstein in New York
Walkers in the City: Jules Dassin and Bruce Goldstein in New York

With his documentary Uncovering “The Naked City,” beloved Film Forum repertory program director Bruce Goldstein pays tribute to his friendship with the legendary Hollywood auteur and the bygone New York he immortalized on-screen.

By Michael Sragow