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IMDbPro

While the City Sleeps

  • 19561956
  • Not RatedNot Rated
  • 1h 40m
IMDb RATING
6.9/10
6.6K
YOUR RATING
Sally Forrest in While the City Sleeps (1956)
A serial killer has been killing beautiful women in New York and the new owner of a media company offers a high ranking job to the first of his senior executives who can get the earliest scoops on the case.
Play trailer2:28
1 Video
79 Photos
CrimeDramaFilm-Noir
A serial killer has been killing beautiful women in New York and the new owner of a media company offers a high ranking job to the first of his senior executives who can get the earliest sco... Read allA serial killer has been killing beautiful women in New York and the new owner of a media company offers a high ranking job to the first of his senior executives who can get the earliest scoops on the case.A serial killer has been killing beautiful women in New York and the new owner of a media company offers a high ranking job to the first of his senior executives who can get the earliest scoops on the case.
IMDb RATING
6.9/10
6.6K
YOUR RATING
    • Fritz Lang
    • Casey Robinson(screenplay)
    • Charles Einstein(novel "The Bloody Spur")
  • Stars
    • Dana Andrews
    • Rhonda Fleming
    • George Sanders
    • Fritz Lang
    • Casey Robinson(screenplay)
    • Charles Einstein(novel "The Bloody Spur")
  • Stars
    • Dana Andrews
    • Rhonda Fleming
    • George Sanders
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 85User reviews
    • 34Critic reviews
  • See more at IMDbPro
  • Videos1

    Official Trailer
    Trailer 2:28
    Watch Official Trailer

    Photos79

    Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, Sally Forrest, and Ida Lupino in While the City Sleeps (1956)
    Sandra White in While the City Sleeps (1956)
    John Drew Barrymore and Sally Forrest in While the City Sleeps (1956)
    Sandra White in While the City Sleeps (1956)
    Dana Andrews, John Drew Barrymore, Vincent Price, George Sanders, Howard Duff, Rhonda Fleming, Sally Forrest, Ida Lupino, and Thomas Mitchell in While the City Sleeps (1956)
    Sandra White in While the City Sleeps (1956)
    Dana Andrews and Rhonda Fleming in While the City Sleeps (1956)
    Howard Duff in While the City Sleeps (1956)
    Insert Movie Poster
    Howard Duff in While the City Sleeps (1956)
    Vincent Price in While the City Sleeps (1956)
    John Drew Barrymore in While the City Sleeps (1956)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Dana Andrews
    Dana Andrews
    • Edward Mobley
    Rhonda Fleming
    Rhonda Fleming
    • Dorothy Kyne
    George Sanders
    George Sanders
    • Mark Loving
    Howard Duff
    Howard Duff
    • Lt. Burt Kaufman
    Thomas Mitchell
    Thomas Mitchell
    • Jon Day Griffith
    Vincent Price
    Vincent Price
    • Walter Kyne
    Sally Forrest
    Sally Forrest
    • Nancy Liggett
    John Drew Barrymore
    John Drew Barrymore
    • Robert Manners
    • (as John Barrymore Jr.)
    James Craig
    James Craig
    • 'Honest' Harry Kritzer
    Ida Lupino
    Ida Lupino
    • Mildred Donner
    Robert Warwick
    Robert Warwick
    • Amos Kyne
    Mae Marsh
    Mae Marsh
    • Mrs. Manners
    Ralph Peters
    Ralph Peters
    • Gerald Meade
    Sandra White
    • Judith Felton
    • (as Sandy White)
    Larry J. Blake
    Larry J. Blake
    • Tim - Police Desk Sergeant
    • (as Larry Blake)
    Celia Lovsky
    Celia Lovsky
    • Miss Dodd
    Ed Hinton
    • Mike O'Leary
    • (as Edward Hinton)
    Pitt Herbert
    Pitt Herbert
    • Carlo - Bartender at the Dell
      • Fritz Lang
      • Casey Robinson(screenplay)
      • Charles Einstein(novel "The Bloody Spur")
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      When the Lipstick Killer is being chased through the city streets, a police car carrying Dana Andrews (as news reporter Edward Mobley) drives past a movie theater where Andrews' name is visible on the marquee.
    • Goofs
      When Robert Manners (John Drew Barrymore, as John Barrymore Jr.) is watching Edward Mobley (Dana Andrews) on TV, he is clutching a copy of "Tales From The Crypt". When he drops it to the floor, a closeup of the comic book now shows it to be titled "The Strangler".
    • Quotes

      Ed Mobely: You know, you have very nice legs.

      Nancy Liggett: Aren't you sweet.

      Ed Mobely: Nice stockings too. What holds your stockings up?

      Nancy Liggett: There's a lot your mother should have told you.

      Ed Mobely: I didn't ask my mother. I asked you.

    • Connections
      Featured in Histoire(s) du cinéma: Toutes les histoires (1989)

    User reviews85

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    7/10
    Lang's cynical critique of American values
    Between 1936 and 1956, during his tenure in America, the German director Fritz Lang made some of the most psychologically astute movies ever to come out of the studio system, often working with the flimsiest of material; pulpish fiction indeed. Most of these films were thrillers, though perhaps only in the most nebulous sense of the term, dealing instead with the psychosis of the killer or, as here, with the iniquitous motives of those on the periphery of the case. 'Plot', in the strictest sense of the term, never really interested Lang, 'the story' as such being secondary to the observational detail and the characterizations. In "While the City Sleeps" the serial killer whom we expect to be at the centre is side-lined to such an extent that catching him is never the focus of attention. He's the 'McGuffin', if you like, for an entirely different movie, one in which the thriller element is dispatched in favour of a study of greed and the relationships, not always savory, between men and women.

    The film is set in the world of newspapers and news agencies, so you expect an aura of venality from the outset. Vincent Price is the vain, self-centered scion of a recently deceased magnate who has taken over his father's business and wants someone else to do all the work. So he creates a new executive position then sets three of his top men against each other vying for the job. The one who 'catches' or names the serial killer terrorizing women in New York, gets it.

    Like many of Lang's films, "While the City Sleeps" had the tawdry feel of a B-movie. There is a kind of rough urgency to it that a more main-streamed movie might have lacked. (You could say Lang's genius was for making silk purses out of sow's ears). He didn't work with 'stars' but character players. About the biggest name in the movie and the 'star' of the picture is Dana Andrews, (superb, he was a very under-rated actor), as the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who, like many of Lang's characters, is less noble than he first appears. As for the rest, despite there being two Oscar winners in the cast, (George Sanders, one of his poorer performances, and Thomas Mitchell, excellent), they were mainly the stable diet of the B-movie, though that said there is a terrific performance from the under-rated Sally Forrest as Andrews' girl who he is not above using as bait to catch the killer and a typically flamboyant one from Ida Lupino.

    After this, Lang was to make only one more film in America before returning to his native Germany, the equally cynical "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt". Indeed it's Lang's cynicism and his critique of American values and mores that set him apart, that put him, like those other European émigrés, Otto Preminger and Douglas Sirk at a critical remove from his American counterparts. In this respect, perhaps, the only American who can be compared to him is Samuel Fuller.
    helpful•43
    9
    • MOscarbradley
    • Oct 1, 2007

    Details

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    • Release date
      • May 30, 1956 (United States)
      • United States
      • English
    • Also known as
    • Filming locations
      • Pacific Electric Subway Tunnel, Los Angeles, California, USA
    • Production company
      • Bert E. Friedlob Productions
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

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    • 1 hour 40 minutes
      • Black and White

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