City That Never Sleeps (1953)

City That Never Sleeps (1953) is a criminal-spirit-of-the-city film noir drama directed by John H. Auer and starring Gig Young, Mala Powers, William Talman, Edward Arnold, Chill Wills, Marie Windsor, and Paula Raymond, with cinematography by John L. Russell.

In an film noir canon now advanced by several hundred film noir presentations, the 1953 movie City That Never Sleeps is self-conscious enough to be looking at noir from the inside. Certain noir conventions appear to be so perfectly understood by the time that City That Never Sleeps came to be produced in 1953, that they are not even explained.

For example the head and corporate villain of the piece, the rather articulately named Penrod Biddel (Edward Arnold) is most likely the head of a crime organisation which we never see, and is certainly a business man — although we do not see very much of his business as such — and is certainly a criminal — although likewise we see very little of his criminal activity.

The fact that these activities remain unseen and more nebulous has the effect of the moral aspect of City That Never Sleeps (1953) by helping to nudge it transformatively towards being a fable as such as it is a crime film. The voiceover effect within City That Never Sleeps combines with this.

The voiceover effect within City That Never Sleeps deserves special attention. First is the reverb effect applied to the voiceover. The descriptive aspect of the voiceover is typical enough, and having developed throughout the film noir period to what must be a high point in 1953, it is natural enough to preface the moral fables of the urban jungle with that all-viewing narrator, setting the scene and forcing the tone through the shadows and fog.

The echo effect is doubtless applied to amplify the idea that this voiceover is none other than the voice of the city itself, a coy device which harks directly to the styles of the golden age where magic played such an important part of the layering of reality with the fantastical. the voiceover says things like:

I am the city, the hub and heart of America...

and 

The city at night. A million homes, three and a half million people, all different from one another. People lovin', people hatin', people stealin', people prayin'...

— to which the morally defeated cop who is close to quitting, whose story this is supposed to be, adds: "Same old shinola."

For its small scale and budget City That Never Sleeps manages to capture the breadth of the entire urban story, and this is its aim. We visit all the right places — plenty dark alleys and doorways and yards — Edward Arnold's modern penthouse to the middle-class apartment of Gig Young. We go backstage and on stage at the burlesque and of course spend a lot of time in a cop car.

The film's tagline is perhaps suggestive of this great mix of locality:

...from the Honky Tonks to the penthouses...the creeps, the hoods, the killers come out to war with the city!

Quite a few stories make up this tale, which has a fantastical feel to it articulated in the voiceover, and its mad echo effect. Whether it was intended or not, the effect does hark back to the previous decade when the fantastic was writ all over film noir. The stories always happened at a remove in the 1940s, because the realism was poetic, and the dialogue and the sets seemed to heighten the sense of the whole performance being a masquerade of reality, as opposed to a representation of it.

The stories within City That Never Sleeps are fables however, and the characters distant echos of reality, powerful types that inhabit imaginary worlds, and this is one reason City That Never Sleeps comes across as such powerful, canonical noir.

Gig Young is really the focus of the action, as a cop who's seen enough. This is a strong film noir idea — it's impossible to number the disillusioned, corrupted and brutal cops of noir — although Gig Young does not become brutal and nor is he brutalised, he has come so close to the edge that he is barely a cop any more.

Dissatisfied with his job and with his marriage, his wife played by Paula Raymond, makes more money than he does. He also hangs around a strip club called The Silver Frolics on Wabash Avenue in order to foster another rocky relationship with Sally 'Angel Face' Connor, played by  Mala Powers. The idea of the movie is that Gig Young on this one night is working the graveyard shift, riding in a prowl car with a new partner he's never met before — Chill Wills, who also plays the unseen and echoing `Voice of the City'.

During this nocturnal tour of the film noir city the various players in the plot appear and fade away. There's the crooked lawyer Edward Arnold, who blackmails him into stealing some incriminating papers. There is Arnold's two-timing wife, played by Marie Windsor and best of all, there is former magician turned criminal William Talman who has his own issues with the criminal city at night.

On the side he encounters his own brother (Ron Hagerthy) who's now Talman's apprentice — his father (Otto Hulett), a police veteran, and and the mechanical man (Wally Cassell) who entertains passers by in the Silver Frolics' window. The idea that the mechanical man does this all night is probably the most chilling and strange effect in City That Never Sleeps. Not only does he never sleep, but he repeats the same brief motions for endless hours in the dark — dreaming and imaging he informs us, of being on a warm beach, far far away.

In conclusion within City That Never Sleeps there's tragedy and heartache, reappraisals and reconciliations. There's even supernatural scent which is entirely for the viewers, as it fails to leave any influence on the characters and their stories. 

Director of photography John Russell  who would later film Psycho (1960) adds so many sweet touches to the direction, and there are more vignettes than you will realise. One of the better but more irrelevant vignettes is when the cops break up a dice game which it has to be admitted is very low scale, and happening far into the night in the most out of the way corner of an abandoned train yard — and for minimal stakes too — the entire pot is $36.

There's a racial aspect to this which is  worth comment largely because of the sympathy we feel for the conman whom they arrest, a somewhat awkward set up suggestive of the fact that this African American hood in Chicago is working the blue-collar whites for their dough, and is bundled off into the night, having his contraband — his crooked dice — confiscated.

As it is Sgt. Joe 'The Voice of Chicago' that arrests him and seems to know him, the suggestion that this is a type of common activity and not a singular crime is implicit. The crime is a trope of the city in fact.

Of all the oddities of the night which appear in City That Never Sleeps, the most curious must be the heroic mechanical man, a tragic figure and posted into this crime drama as a possible hero, a man at least offered the opportunity of heroism. This is the so-called mechanical man played by Wally Cassell, the tragic figure with the oddest job in noir — a kind of mime who stands in the window of a burlesque all night — pretending to be mechanical and fooling everyone it seems.

The conceit here, which may have worked better in the book this idea was taken from if it was taken from a book at all — is that the mime and the makeup is so good that passers by and even the killer played by William Talman don't know if he is real or not. Once Talman has worked it out however, he has to then assassinate the mechanical man as the mechanical man has been witness to his crime.

The super-high dose of pathos however comes when the mechanical man — who is unable to find love because he is like something out of a dark-city Wizard Of Oz, and only partially metaphorically human because he is a male unable to show emotion and clearly purely 'mechanical' — it is only when he cries a solitary tear that we can know for sure that he is human, because the tear proves it. 

It may even be implied that William Talman's character is waiting for this tear too. He is the killer waiting for a chance to break free, and hidden behind a smashed pane of glass across the street it may even be suggested that he sees this tear from fifty metres away, and then acts. The tear is either way a somewhat anti-climatic emotional summit in City That Never Sleeps (1953). 

"No one should die like a freak in a window."

In terms of the spirit of the city aspect to City That Never Sleeps (1953) this is an essential component to the carrying stream of film noir mythology and noir's status as a powerful cultural phenomenon. More than any other media, film noir documented the sprawling formation of the urban centres of America as they became more populous, more dangerous and fully 24-hour as they did mid-century.

In that world of the night there was crime and danger, and around that there was sadness and defeat, as seen in nearly all of the characters who make the urban darkness their home. So much of film noir documents and fantasises about the city at night, that there is little wonder there is almost a sub-genre of film noir which captures this for all time, almost defining the style, certainly making an assertions concerning what the film noir style is about and trying to achieve.

To that end even the list of film noir greats which have the word 'city' in their titles is powerful — enough to form yet another nested sub-genre. the sub-genre would have to be called 'criminal spirit of the city stories with the word city in the title':

• City For Conquest (1940)
• Whispering City (1942)
• The Naked City (1948)
• Cry Of The City (1948)
• Night And The City (1950)
• Dark City (1950)
• The Captive City (1952)
• While The City Sleeps (1956)
• Edge Of The City (1957)

Incidentally, Canon City (1948) might be considered for this short list of film noir with the word 'city' in the title, but it's a prison break movie, and maybe has less to do with a 'criminal spirit of the city' style of movies we're seeing here.

There is a slight influence of The Asphalt Jungle in City That Never Sleeps, as both feature a crooked lawyer, a pretty woman too evil for comfort, and a safe to rob. William Talman's robbery sequence is super-thrilling in fact, and more so in that it's just one aspect of an entire creatures of the night repertoire. 

The literary notion at work is in the hands of the writers of City That Never Sleeps, an attempt to catch the spirit of a city — a difficult ask, and perhaps a theme never bettered than by O. Henry. More than other movies like it, City That Never Sleeps has a light step, seen for exemple in such noir witticism as:

Waitress to Bartender: Two Old Fashions- no ice, no water, no sugar, no grenadine.

 

City That Never Sleeps (1953) on Wikipedia

Sally 'Angel Face' Connors: When I first came to this town I was gonna be - oh, there were a lot of things I was gonna do. Become famous. But Chicago's the big melting pot, and I got melted, but good.

Fundamentally however, the sugar daddy story remains as intact as ever, not much adapted since the early 1930s. The nasty rich guy always seems to have an doting younger woman nearby, but scratch her surface and the hurt oozes forth.

Penrod Biddel: I tried my best to help you the same as I helped others in the past. You, Lydia, the first time I saw you...

Lydia Biddel: [Interrupting] I was selling coffee and hamburgers behind a counter in a railroad station.

Penrod Biddel: Yes, I had an hour to kill.

Lydia Biddel: [Bitterly] And you used it to murder years of my life.