Before the popular American crime series spinoff took to the airwaves in 1958 revealing five years worth of the eight million stories of The Naked City, New York columnist turned film noir producer Mark Hellinger and director Jules Dassin told one single unforgettable tale with their 1948 cinematic release.
Crisply restored to its original full screen black and white glory in a worthwhile Criterion Collection release, the DVD of The Naked City also includes rare footage of Dassin, scholarly interviews by professionals in the fields of architecture and post World War II cinema, a screenwriter commentary track, among others. However, the main highlight is the film itself, narrated by the late Hellinger (whom Wikipedia reported died suddenly after attending the film’s preview) and based on an original screenplay by Malvin Wald and Albert Maltz (one of the original Hollywood 10, who like director Dassin was blacklisted by the HUAC). In an opening that must’ve been quite shocking to the typical theatergoer of the late 1940s, Dassin’s City breaks free from traditional film noir structure from its audacious beginning you can witness below.
The Naked City: The Beginning
While narration is nothing new — save for the way it’s used in this film — spoken credits are rare throughout our cinematic history and I can only recall two distinct examples, namely Francois Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 (which fits in with a future where the written word is dangerous) and Robert Altman’s experimental M*A*S*H. However, it’s the way this same introduction by Hellinger as himself and not a character in the film commenting on the action (such as Morgan Freeman’s postmodern narration of Million Dollar Baby or the countless examples of traditional film noir) continues throughout that subconsciously sets the style of Dassin’s film apart on an auditory level before we even take the cinematography into consideration. That being said, the narration does grow tiresome, especially after the twenty minute mark when it grates on our nerves as Hellinger voices not only the thoughts of passersby but main characters and comments on every action as a God-like figure suitable to the opening “bird’s eye” cinematic view which seems to indicate that he’s somehow looking down on everything.
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