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Cry of the City More at IMDbPro »
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| Index | 23 reviews in total |
37 out of 38 people found the following review useful:
A classic of its kind, 9 August 2005
Author:
graham clarke (grahamclarke@earthling.net)
It is not surprising that so much has been written about the sub genre
of the "film noir". The execution of a noir film required a tremendous
artistry and expertise in all aspects of cinema. The classic noir films
are truly works of art; cinema at its best, not relying on star power
or big budgets, but rather a mastery of the very rudiments of making
movies.
What Ford was to the western, Hitchcock to suspense, Sirk to melodrama,
so was Robert Siodmak to the noir. While "Cry of the City" is often
left out of discussions of the genre, it is, in many ways a near
perfect example of the genre.
By 1948 the noir was beginning to hit its stride. Siodmak came to this
project with much valuable experience. His execution of this not
especially remarkable story has a fluidity and assurance of style that
one can only marvel at.
Despite the well worn cop vs. gangster tale, there is a potent
psychological complexity at the core of "Cry of the City". Richard
Conte's Martin Rome, is charismatic and charming. Not only does he work
his magic on unsuspecting females, we the audience are firmly on his
side at the start of the movie. As the plot unfolds his ruthless,
selfish and manipulative motives become apparent. Yet it will take some
time before we are completely convinced. It's a masterly stroke of
screen writing. It will take Victor Mature's impassioned indictment to
completely convince us.
Victor Mature is surprisingly competent in the lead in what must be
surely one of his best roles. Richard Conte is simply superb in a
complex and tricky role. His method is one of economy and subtlety and
a lesson to screen actors. Despite a host of fine performances, Conte
seems to not have garnered the respect he deserved.
A classic of its kind.
21 out of 21 people found the following review useful:
Another Good 'Noir' Needing To Be Released, 25 March 2007
Author:
ccthemovieman-1 from United States
I think this is an underrated (and under-publicized) film that sports
an interesting story. Yes, it's a typical one of its day in that it
highlights two boyhood friends who wind up on the opposite side of the
law ("Angels With Dirty Face," etc.) but it is well done.
Victor Mature "Lt. Candella") and Richard Conte ("Martin Rome") both do
a very credible job as the good and bad guys, respectively.
Shelley Winters, Debra Paget and Hope Emerson all provide solid female
acting support in this little-known film noir. Emerson ("Rose Given")
might be the least known of the three, but not to me since I am a big
fan of the Peter Gunn TV series of the late 1950s in which she played a
key role.
With film noir making a comeback in recent years, I hope someone puts
this movie out on DVD.
25 out of 30 people found the following review useful:
Film Noir.....At It's Best, 7 March 2004
Author:
sasheegm-1 from United States
From the opening strains of Alfred Newman's "Street Scene" Theme Music, which accompanies the Credits to the End title, "Cry of the City" invokes a tale of good and evil in the persons of Victor Mature & Richard Conte........Boyhood pals from the lower East Side of N.Y......One a Cop, the other a Gangster................But make no bones about it, this film is Conte's showcase and he makes the most out of it in a chilling performance as Martin Rome(Roma), a savage killer with no remorse at all.........He is persued throughout the film by Victor Mature as Leut. Candella, Chief of the Homicide Beaureau......and Mature gives a fine performance in the role...........Supporting players are highlighted by Hope Emerson in a performance of a lifetime, as a Female version of Conte.....their scenes together are cat & mouse......but which is which?.......For a special treat on the film noir craze of the 1940s; and a pure New York City feeling; do not miss "Robert Siodmack's"...."Cry of the City"-1948---20th. Century Fox........Respectfully submitted, sasheegm at the movies
16 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
"Every Place You Look, A Bullethole", 26 July 2000
Author:
Michael Coy (michael.coy@virgin.net) from London, England
Marty Rome and Vittorio Candella both grew up in an Italian
neighbourhood in New York. Both are smart, handsome young men. But that's
where the similarity ends. Marty became a violent criminal, and now he lies
in a hospital bed, riddled with gunshot wounds. Vittorio went straight, and
is now the police lieutenant investigating Marty.
It's not as if Marty never had a choice. The film stresses the decency
of Marty's upbringing. The family is 'deserving poor' - crucifix on the
living-room wall, mother attending Mass every day, display case of war
medals in the back room. Marty's girlfriend, Teena Riconti, is also from an
honest family. So what turned Marty bad? This is analysed through the
treatment of Tony, Marty's kid brother. Tony is on the cusp of manhood and
beginning to adopt Marty's warped values. Can he be saved, or will he
inevitably gravitate towards the "poolroom hotshots"?
Lest we conclude that moral depravity is the preserve of immigrants or
even the urban poor, the film offers us Niles, the crooked lawyer. Played
by Berry Kroeger with almost Wellesian flamboyance, Niles is the
distillation of nastiness - a man with every advantage in life who still
elects to sup with the devil. Twentieth-Century Fox's films noirs exhibited
little love for attorneys, but Niles is probably the most unpleasant of them
all.
Victor Mature and Richard Conte are in great form as Candella and Marty
respectively. There is no real romantic sub-plot - Teena appears briefly at
the beginning and the end, but plays no part in the story - and Candella is
too busy making himself at home in the Rome household to go out and get a
girl. Shelley Winters plays Brenda, one of Marty's dumb broads. For her,
here in 1948, the typecasting had already begun.
As always, noir uses external scenery to symbolise internal emotion in
the classic expressionist manner. Marty and Teena are filmed through the
bars of the hospital bed-head, representing both the imprisonment awaiting
Marty and the way in which Society is bearing down on these two, restricting
their options. The hospital architecture is much vaster than the human
scale, making a similar point - we like to think of ourselves as autonomous
individuals, captains of our own destinies, but we are little more than
insects, and the nest we have built around us dominates our existence.
Marty's journey through the tunnel of the prison hospital is like an
expressionist bad dream, a virtual street with pedestrians and vehicles, but
no sky. Arches are everywhere. Marty's hospital ward is a forest of arch
shapes. Niles' office has two arched windows whose insistent geometry
dominates the screen. The church continues this motif with its lines of
arches overhead. The city is our nest, and its institutions are the linked
burrows through which we are obliged to scurry. Neon signs continually
force themselves on our attention - the Gillette ad in the street, and the
garage sign intruding through Rose Gibbons' apartment window. Just as with
the terrific el-train shot, the city creeps into our consciousness, never
allowing us to forget that we are living in its bowels.
Tony's moral crisis centres on the hard decisions which his bad-guy
brother forces him to make. We see his hesitation when Marty tells him to
take Candella's gun, then later when he is asked to steal the family's
savings. In the church, the wall picture shows Christ falling with His
cross. When, moments later, Candella the Christ-figure slumps to the
pavement, it is Tony who (quite literally) supports the police.
15 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Dark city, doomed gangster, stolen jewels--noir heaven, 22 August 2007
Author:
imogensara_smith from New York City
With his silky manners and glittering eyes, Richard Conte was a prince
among hoodlums: elegant, magnetic and sharp as a shiv. As the mugs and
roughnecks of the early thirties evolved into more sophisticated
postwar gangsters, Conte's regal bearing gloved the gangster's raw
aggression in smooth style. (Significantly, he was one of the first
Italian-American leading men in Hollywood.) Conte always looks like
he's plugged into some private source of electricity, like you could
get a shock from touching him. He needs that intensity here, since he
plays a wounded criminal who spends most of the movie lying in bed or
limping around, dragging a gunshot-riddled leg and crumpling with pain.
He still manages to radiate menace and charisma, threatening or
seducing everyone who comes near him.
Plot-wise, CRY OF THE CITY is that old chestnut about two boys from the
same neighborhood (New York's Little Italy, presented with far more
nuance and authenticity than Hollywood's usual spaghetti-with-meatballs
style) who grow up on opposite sides of the law. Lieutenant Candella
(Victor Mature) pursues Martin Rome (Conte) relentlessly after he
escapes from a prison hospital; Rome is determined to clear his
girlfriend of suspicion in a jewel theft by finding the real culprits.
The plot is just a scaffolding to support a series of scenes in which
Rome and Candella alternately vie for leverage and influence over an
eclectic parade of supporting characters, all of whom seem driven by
fear or greed. Desperation inhabits the city like weather. Director
Siodmak, one of the masters of film noir, suffuses the film with a dark
mood, atmospheric locations, and those corrupted personal transactions
that define the genre.
In a hospital in the middle of the night a priest murmurs and
family-members weep quietly over a dying man who is chained to his
bed—Martin Rome has just killed a cop in a shoot-out. Later, after he
has escaped and collapsed again, his girl (Shelley Winters in a
leopard-print coat) enlists an unlicensed foreign doctor to treat him
in the back seat while they drive around damp city streets, using neon
signs for light. Stolen jewels get stashed in a locker in a subway
station. Marty almost meets his match in a massive, burly masseuse
(Hope Emerson), who looms over him as he works his bright-eyed,
caressing charm. Their scene together is funny, scary and perversely
titillating all at once, as the mountainous woman starts to massage his
back and then gets her hands around his throat. Sadder is Marty's
seduction of a plain, middle-aged hospital nurse who is burdened, we
later find out, with a nasty, selfish, annoying old mother. At one
point Candella reads off to Marty a list of all the former girlfriends
the cop has had to look up, and Marty amusingly reacts to each name
with regret, embarrassment or fondness. For this tough guy, sex appeal
is as powerful a weapon as a gun or a knife—sometimes it's the only one
he has.
All the time we're rooting for Marty—at least I was. CRY OF THE CITY
perfectly demonstrates how easily movies can mess with one's moral
compass. Marty is a killer and a selfish, remorseless crook, but his
élan and vulnerability make him an irresistible underdog. His
adversary, Candella, is a self-righteous moralizer, a monomaniacal
Javert whose hatred seems inspired more by his enemy's charisma than by
his crimes. Victor Mature's heavy, stolid presence sharply contrasts
with Conte's proud, dazzling quickness. Someone once described Mature
as an intelligent actor cursed with the face and physique of a
dissipated life guard; I forget who wrote that, but it hits the nail on
the head. The poor guy *looked* like a bad actor—all beef and no
brains—even though he wasn't. Here his scenes with the Rome family are
intended to soften his character, and he does have likable moments, but
the way he turns them all—finally even the kid brother—against Marty
only increased my sympathy for the endangered outcast. His accusation
that Marty uses people is fair enough, but he lays it on too thick; it
wasn't Marty's idea to enlist the illegal doctor or the "trusty" who
helps him break out of jail. Booming, "Stop in the name of the law!"
Candella embodies implacable authority, and who could root for that?
I like to think that in real life superficial concerns like these
wouldn't get in the way of my knowing right from wrong, but this is a
movie; style is bound to trump substance. Are films like this one—made
under the Hays Code, when movies were not allowed to openly glorify
criminals—deliberately subversive? The script says one thing, but the
casting says another. In a way, that hypocrisy is essential to noir, an
under-the-radar phenomenon that made caustic comments about human
nature while ostensibly endorsing the Ten Commandments. For Martin
Rome, a premature death isn't too high a price to pay for all the fun
he had breaking the rules. And a clichéd ending is not too high a price
for the pleasure of this movie.
16 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
Film Noir Magnifico, 7 October 2002
Author:
Carolyn Paetow from Proctorville, Ohio
Victor Mature and Richard Conte deliver strong performances in this engrossing, uplifting story of the struggle between a cop and a criminal. Both men are presented as products of the city's Italian working class, and the film manages to make much of their divergent paths without being pedestrian or pedantic. The supporting characters are finely drawn and add an intriguing dimension to a plot-line that, otherwise, could have come off as time-worn and predictable. Hope Emerson is of particular interest as a disgruntled masseuse of rich old ladies. The movie is a marvelous example of the excellence that could emerge from 40's morality and is missing from much of modern filmmaking.
13 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Mamma Mia. Some picture!, 1 September 2006
Author:
Robert J. Maxwell (rmax304823@yahoo.com) from Deming, New Mexico, USA
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Robert Siodmak packs a lot of color and tension into this tale of
Martin Rome (Richard Conte), an escaped and wounded murderer who
wanders around a city that oozes staged authenticity, bringing trouble
to everyone he manipulates into helping him -- a kind of "Odd Man Out"
as seen in a schmutzy mirror.
It's a very well-done example of a dark crime drama, and this despite
the fact that it lacks a sense of place. The city is a huge presence
rendered anonymous by its own incognito. The names of streets and
neighborhoods always tell us something about the characters and the
life styles as well as about the locations. Hollywood Boulevard, Haight
and Ashbury, Greenwich Village, Chinatown, 42nd Street, Beacon Hill,
Covent Garden, Montmarte. Even fictional names are evocative, as in
Beaver Canal. This movie succeeds in steeping us in seamy urban setting
despite the total absence of navigation aids.
The sense of ethnicity helps. We get to know the Italian-American
family of Martin Rome rather well. His father wants nothing to do with
him. His mother is in the approach-avoidance conflict that all such
mothers are in. Marty's younger brother, Tony, at first admires and
helps Marty but then, when his back is to the wall, changes allegiances
and helps the wounded Lieutenant Candella (Victor Mature).
Mature, I understand, was of mixed ancestry, including Swedish, but I'm
sorry -- he LOOKS Italian! He's fine as the business-like but not
insensitive cop on Marty's trail. And as Marty, I don't think Richard
Conte has ever given a better performance. His range was limited but
this role plays into his strong suit -- the underground person who is
not big and strong but lives by his wits, a wily man, ferret-like, who
scans others quickly and accurately to sum up their weaknesses.
The cast has many familiar names in it. Shelley Winters, Konstantin
Shayne, Fred Clark, Barry Kroeger, Debra Paget. If you don't recognize
the names, the faces will often register as seen-before.
And then there is the almost unimaginable Hope Emerson, a woman so huge
and so smarmy that if she didn't exist it would be necessary to invent
her. She's easily a head taller than her patient, Conte, to whom she
gives an ominous massage. (She calls him only by his full first name,
"Martin.") And she's built along the lines of her contemporary, the pro
wrestler, Man Mountain Dean. My God, watch her push pancakes into that
mushy face! Look at her cross-eyed and she'd shove her fist down your
throat and rip out your pyloric sphincter.
The directorial style is heavily influenced by noir. Most of the story
seems to take place at night. Pavements are wet with recent rain. Guns
are small but ubiquitous. Siodmak actually inserts some scenes that are
strictly speaking unnecessary but nevertheless powerful. Barry Kroeger,
for instance, having been stabbed by Conte in the back through the
chair he is sitting in. After he's been dead a minute or so and the
camera has been on Conte who is ransacking the office, there's a
shocking off-screen thump and a rhythmic squeak, squeak, squeak, and
the camera moves to show us that Kroeger's body has fallen to the floor
and the chair (with a gaping knife hole through the back) is swiveling
crazily on its pivot in circle after circle.
There's hardly any musical score but what there is, is used to good
effect. Note the steady slow beat of the drums as Conte makes his
escape from the hospital.
It's just a gangster story but one of the better ones. Recommended.
11 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Same Origins, Different Paths, 1 January 2008
Author:
Claudio Carvalho from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
In New York, when the cop killer Martin Rome (Richard Conte) arrives in
the hospital badly wounded, the lawyer W.A. Niles (Berry Kroeger)
unsuccessfully tries to convince him to confess the robbery of a
collection of jewels and the death of the owner. Along the night,
Martin's girlfriend Teena Riconti (Debra Paget) sneaks and visits him.
Later Niles threatens Martin telling that he would catch Teena to force
her to assume the other crime. When Martin escapes from the hospital,
Lieutenant Candella (Victor Mature), who is an old friend of the Rome
family, investigates the case and has to chase Martin.
"Cry of the City" is a moralist police story, with the fight between
good, represented by Lt. Candella, and evil, represented by Martin
Rome. Both characters have the same origins in the lower class
neighborhood, but follow different paths of law: while Candella accepts
to earn a low salary and "sleep well at night", the manipulative Martin
uses people and prefers to taste the pleasures of life whatever the
final price is. Their duel has a predictable and corny conclusion, but
the story is engaging and supported by a beautiful black and white
cinematography and good acting. My vote is seven.
Title (Brazil): "Uma Vida Marcada' ("A Marked Life")
12 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Picture For A Sunday Afternoon, 5 September 2004
Author:
patersonbutter from Lodi, NJ
I remember seeing this movie many times on "Picture For A Sunday Afternoon", "The Early Show" and "The Million Dollar Movie" and I always loved watching it. I thought Richard Conte played one of the best "bad guy" roles I'd ever seen. Using his girlfriend, kid brother and even his mother to facilitate his life of crime. Victor Mature gives his usual solid performance and Fred Clark as his assistant was interesting as well considering that his future seemed to be bumbling comedic bit player. The sleazy lawyer and murderous masseuse were also well cast. What I can't understand is why this flick as well as One Million BC aren't available on DVD.
12 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
Good Noir...Hope Emerson steals the show!, 31 October 2000
Author:
spompermayer from San Francisco
Cry of the City has good performances by Richard Conte and Victor Mature. Conte is great with his soft-spoken voice and shifty eyes. The best scenes though are with the bigger-than-life HOPE EMERSON! Her entry down the long corridor, eating the pancakes, and trying to strong-arm Conte are all memorable, cult-ish moments.
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