Excellent but underrated film

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

New York cops unravel a murder. Very believable tale with lots of sociological comments.The most notable aspect is that the narrator tells the viewer who made the film--the director, the actors, the scriptwriters, etc., and the real inhabitants of the city. The narrator states an important fact--the entire film was shot outside the film studios: in New York, in the streets and in real apartments.The cinematography (the final sequence), the direction and the script are all praiseworthy, keeping the viewer interested right up to the end. A rare film in which the cops are smart!Structurally, very close to what Aristotle would have approved.

Yes. Time (and decades of TV Cop shows) has somewhat dulled the brilliant cutting-edge uniqueness of this once trend-setting Crime-Drama.Released in 1948 - The Naked City is presented in a semi-documentary format. Its story spans a 6 day investigation into the death, by drowning, of an attractive young fashion model named Jean Dexter.With there being no apparent signs of a struggle, Miss Dexter's death is at first taken to be a mere suicide since she was found drowned in her own bathtub. But after careful, step-by-step, investigation by Detective Dan Muldoon, it is soon revealed that this is clearly a case of murder of the most foul.Suspicion falls heavily on various shifty characters who all prove to have some sort of connection with a string of recent apartment burglaries.The Naked City's superb climax relentlessly builds to a heart-pounding, adrenaline-charged manhunt through the crowded streets and alleyways of NYC.Cinematographer, William Daniels, and, editor, Paul Weatherwax, both won Oscars for their excellent work on this first-rate film.

Amid a semi-documentary portrait of New York and its people, Jean Dexter, an attractive blonde model, is murdered in her apartment. Homicide detectives Dan Muldoon and Jimmy Halloran investigate.I have to give this film credit for pushing boundaries in the 1940s. Maybe I am wrong and maybe this was not a big deal -- after all, there is not actually any nudity or explicit murder -- but it had a gritty feel to it and when one man cracks a joke about a girl killed in the bathtub, that just seemed in poor taste.The mystery is good, and I like watching detectives track down the suspects. It does not take Charlie Chan to solve a murder this nasty and heinous, but it does take Muldoon and Halloran, who are some of the top cops out there!

I admit I work long days and don't have a lot of energy once I get home to watch one of my DVR'd movies. But I tried four times to see this film through to the end, and each time it put me to sleep. I finally gave up and deleted the loser.The movie starts out somewhat intriguingly in a documentary-like mode as it examines snippets of New York City life to set the scene. We then witness the last moments of a murder, which, strangely, the voice-over treats in a casual, jarringly wry manner. The movie then goes on to create a touchy-feely, leprechaun-like characterization of Irish police Lt. Muldoon and show his dedicated team of gumshoes, most notably Don Taylor as Halloran, an actor who bears an uncanny resemblance to Steve Doocy, a current FOX news network anchor. The scenes of Halloran at home with his perky, childish wife are dated, cutesy, and off-putting.Balancing this stuff out is a dour and extended visit with the dead woman's saturnine parents and scenes from the extremely dysfunctional relationship of sleazy murder suspect Frank Niles and Dorothy Hart as Ruth Morrison. The audience is supposed to dumbly accept that a gorgeous pin-up type like Ruth has no problem hitching her destiny to a creep like Niles. (I hate when audiences are taken for such fools!)I'm sorry I tried so many times to see this messy patchwork to its conclusion. The more I saw, the less I cared whodunit.