Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

The Worst Film Ever

Strong and Moving!

Absolutely the worst movie.

Not one of the great Fritz Lang's greatest, "While The City Sleeps" despite its great Film Noir title never really wakens itself up. It has its moments but with a confusing plot-line, some confused casting and acting to go with it, it was something of a disappointment to this long-term Lang fan.It starts well enough with the shocking murder of a young girl in her apartment, although too soon we're shown who the murderer is, a young Elvis lookalike and given the usual Freudian explanations - father left when he was young, mother wanted a girl instead of a boy - for his crimes. Hitchcock of course treated the subject of a mother-fixated psychopath just a bit better a few years later and I would doubt he learned much from his great contemporary's earlier take on the subject.Mixed in with this is a weird background story of three prominent newspaper staff members set against each other for the top job on the paper by a miscast Vincent Price as the heir to the paper's owner who conveniently dies barely minutes into the film. The late mogul's preferred choice to take over the reins is crusading Pulitzer Prize winning author and now occasional reporter and TV broadcaster, Dana Andrews, whose character appears more often drunk than sober and who has an unattractively off-hand way with his adoring girlfriend, at one point offering her as bait for the killer without even asking her. To be fair, this race to the top amongst the three contenders holds almost no viewer interest and only detracts from the main plot. Throw in Ida Lupino as an on-the-make female reporter, content to seduce Andrews at the behest of her equally miscast editor boss George Sanders, Rhonda Fleming as Price's philandering wife and Sally Forrest, with a trendy boy-ish hair cut as Andrews' too young now-she-loves-him, now-she-doesn't girlfriend and there really are too many cooks spoiling this particular pot-boiler.There are also several scenes which are just plain odd, like when Lupino's character attempts to beguile Andrews by using an old-fashioned, supposedly salacious spectrograph which turns out to contains an image of a swaddling baby or when Price, in a natty pair of shorts practises his putting while in conversation with his statuesque wife who is striking poses in her beach-wear. The film really had no attractive characters and the female characters in particular are poorly written. There is a noticeably adult approach to the filming of the loosely-termed love scenes (one especially where an adulterous conversation is played out with a bed prominently in the background) and the final attack on Price's wife is noticeably realistic, but this film lacks the imaginative flair of director Lang's best work and ranks as one of his few failures in my book.

Directed by Fritz Lang, with a screenplay by Casey Robinson, this slightly above average crime drama, behind the scenes media expose features an all star cast that includes Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Howard Duff, Thomas Mitchell, Vincent Price, James Craig, Ida Lupino, and Robert Warwick, among others.It's interesting to see how the media and police worked together in the mid-50's vs. at cross purposes (it seems) these days. More relevant to today is the storyline about different media branches within the same news organization (print, television, and wire) competing against each other to be first with the story, or for exclusives. This film is probably ripe for a remake given the explosion of the Internet. Also, the criminal profiling that Andrews's and Duff's characters do, though not seminal, is interesting even if it is taken to incredible extremes late in the movie.Amos Kyne (Warwick), the head of a media conglomerate, dies, leaving his spoiled, almost maniacal son Walter (Price) in charge of it. Walter decides it would be a good idea to establish an executive position to run things for him; he'll pick one of the heads of the organization's main departments for the job. This means news-wire head Mark Loving (Sanders), newspaper head John Day Griffith (Mitchell), and news pictures chief Harry Kritzer (Craig) must compete for it.Edward Mobley (Andrews), the Pulitzer Prize winning author who heads television news, refuses to participate. Walter has a chip on his shoulder about Mobley anyway since his father had been grooming him for the job even though Mobley lacked the ambition and/or didn't want the responsibility. As luck would have it, just before Kyne's death, a major story broke - a murder of an attractive young woman was committed whereby the killer wrote "ask mother" in lipstick on the wall of her apartment. Walter makes it clear that solving this crime will be a major feather in the cap of the man that does, as far as this new executive position is concerned.All this is happening at the same time that Mobley has finally popped the question to Loving's secretary Nancy Liggett (Sally Forrest). Both Loving and Griffith vie for assistance from Mobley, who has good contacts within the police department like Lieutenant Burt Kaufman (Duff), while 'honest' (?) Harry plans to lie low and use Kyne's wife Dorothy (Fleming), with whom he's having an affair, as his inside track to the job. Loving is willing to stoop pretty low himself, using his main squeeze, female reporter Mildred Donner (Lupino), to seduce Mobley into helping him. Ralph Peters appears as one of Griffith's reporters; Joe Devlin (uncredited) as another on his staff.Meanwhile, we see the murderer, dubbed the lipstick killer (John Drew Barrymore; yes, John Barrymore Jr.) fits the profile description Mobley reads on the air - a 20 year old "boy" with perverse ideas about male-female relationships that still lives with his "unloving" mother (Mae Marsh).Unfortunately, a few too many coincidences (like the fact that Kritzer's apartment is across the hall from Liggett's), the suddenly razor sharp analysis and too conveniently timed second Mobley- Kaufman profiling luncheon followed by a fairly lame chase, the sub- par Mobley-Liggett "romance" plot-line (esp. the off-key comic relief elements) detract from what would otherwise be an above average film.Of course, a modern viewer has to be careful not to be jaded by the more current crime films "he's" seen, else his enjoyment of this one would be even less.

A serial killer is on the loose leaving the words "Ask Mother" at a crime scene. Sickly media mogul Amos Kyne is taken with the story calling the killer "The Lipstick Killer". Amos dies leaving the company in the hands of his feckless son Walter Kyne (Vincent Price) who assigns the story to the various heads of the media conglomerate. He creates a new title Executive Director to run the whole corporation for him pitting his news teams against each other for the scoop. Mark Loving runs the Kyne news wire service and recruits gossip columnist Mildred Donner (Ida Lupino). On the other team, Jon Day Griffith runs the newspaper New York Sentinel. Edward Mobley (Dana Andrews) is the star TV reporter dating Loving's secretary Nancy Liggett. Mobley insults the killer on the air while announcing his engagement to Nancy to lure the killer out.For me, there is simply too much going on. The movie starts with a serial killer and I assumed this is a crime drama. Then the newspaper politics and intrigue begin. It's sometimes fun. It's sometimes chaotic. The portrayal of the killer as he listened to Mobley is disappointing. He's not threatening. He's not scary. I would have been more interested in the inter-corporate rivalries if they're not talking about a serial killer. The seriousness of the murders don't match the chaotic fun of the news rivals.

Robert Warwick appears and then dies at the beginning of While The City Sleeps. He's a Rupert Murdoch type media tycoon and he's left his empire to his rather unsteady son Vincent Price. Price is second generation wealth and looking to put his personal stamp on the empire bequeathed to him. But he'll need someone who really knows the business and three candidates present themselves, Thomas Mitchell, George Sanders, and James Craig. All of them use fair and foul means to gain the prize. Craig's is the foulest of all, he's carrying on with Price's tramp of a wife in Rhonda Fleming hoping the two of them will influence Price.We've got a couple of other players in this field also. Dana Andrews sides with Mitchell who edits the local tabloid similar to the Murdoch run New York Post. Andrews has won Pulitzer Prizes the two of them decide to aid the police in capturing a serial killer before that term came into use who is targeting young women. Andrews baits the killer in his nightly newscast and also happens to mention he's just gotten engaged to Sally Forrest who works as George Sanders's secretary in the wire service portion of the empire. In a really slick piece of casting against type Sanders while having a more or less undefined role, comes off as the most sympathetic character of the lot.Andrews ostensibly the hero is a real creep for using his girl friend Forrest as bait even with the connivance of his friend Detective Howard Duff in charge of the investigation. It nearly goes wrong.John Drew Barrymore who had an odd career being the holder of that great name of the theater. In 1956 people had memories of his father and probably expected a classical actor in that vein. Instead Barrymore had he not had that name might have found himself a niche in Hollywood with the newer post war rebel types like James Dean or Marlon Brando. This film is one of his best performances as the woman hating, mother fixated serial killer in a career that quite frankly featured a lot of junk.In the few scenes she's in, but stealing every one of them is Ida Lupino as an acid tongued gossip columnist in the Hedda Hopper tradition. She in her way gets the final say on who becomes top dog.While The City Sleeps is one of the most cynical and jaded films ever to come out of Hollywood. Fritz Lang mixed a really great cast together with a great script and got quite an indictment of the news business, predating Network by 20 years. His happy ending for Andrews and Forrest didn't ring true, but other than that a great piece of work.