While the City Sleeps

Fritz Lang was one of the greatest and most influential directors in the world at the height of his success in Germany in the 1920s and early ‘30s (making Metropolis, among other masterpieces), but after fleeing Nazi rule and arriving in Hollywood in 1934, he slipped down the ladder into smaller budgets and independent productions, ending his Hollywood career at RKO under the rocky leadership of Howard Hughes. Lang’s 1956 While the City Sleeps—ostensibly a thriller about a serial killer on the loose in the generic big city, and the media circus surrounding the investigation—is really more of a media satire centered on a multimedia news company. Dana Andrews stars as a TV newscaster competing with the company's daily paper and a wire service, and Ida Lupino is the columnist whose nose for office politics is her greatest survival skill. Both are first among equals in a cast of one-time movie stars now doing duty as wily Hollywood pros: Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Howard Duff, Thomas Mitchell, and Vincent Price. The film doesn’t feature much tension or crime movie thriller energy, but it does offer a thoroughly corrupt portrait: while a psychotic leatherboy kills girls and blames his mom, the staff of a news organization plays politics when a new owner pits his employees against one another to vie for promotion. Although the cast is great, this is a minor film and far from Lang's best work. Not a necessary purchase. (S. Axmaker)