WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1956)

With his first sound film ‘M’and the first path breaking serial killer film ever made in the history of cinema, German Master Fritz Lang made one thing very clear that it’s not just another serial killer murder mystery but something more than it which juxtaposed the enigmatic killer with the other dark and ugly reality of the society. Here once again he remained stick to that promise. The film is brilliant and gripping noir, a kind of that you expect from makers like Lang. It begins with two deaths- the first one is murder of a young woman and the other is natural death of the senior News Media conglomerate named Kyne. His pampered and good for nothing son, Kyne Jr. is now heading the company that took years to build its name by his father. As soon he joined he introduced the chaos of competition in his office. However, Senior Kyne’s admirable reporter Edward Mobley untouched by it keeps on analyzing crime beat on television with focusing on a homicide case. He plays a bait by provoking the maniac killer on his show telecast but by doing so he puts his own and his loved one’s life in danger.

As said earlier, along with the thrilling noir, Lang unashamedly covered the changing ugly face of rat race news reporting and power struggle where everybody is searching for scoops and exclusive stories and trying hard to secure their wishful positions in the eyes of their boss. They don’t mind going any moral or immoral means to secure it. And the real and responsible, dedicated and deserving men who worked desperately to search the truth remains uncredited in the end. So the worthy journalist Mobley quits the job and the unworthy pushers rules the forth estate. He again raised a point who’s the real criminal and who’s more immoral here! It would have been much better end, if Lang had remained stick to this end but maybe to pull the mass audience or maybe on the insistence of RKO studio-producers, he turned it to the happy end with news of Mobley's appointment as editor of published in newspaper. Dana Andrews is the man to watch and he brought Mobley what he should be in a noir like this! Perhaps Lang’s most underrated film noir.

Ratings-8/10