Film Forum

U.S., 1950
Directed by George Sherman
Starring Richard Conte, Coleen Gray
Screenplay by Jo Eisinger
35mm. Approx. 86 min.

Drugs, blackmail, and murder at Bellevue – no, it’s not a Frederick Wiseman documentary – with Richard Conte going undercover as an intern, and speaking a “no particular city” prologue to appease an irate Mayor O’Dwyer.

Presented with support from the Robert Jolin Osborne Endowed Fund for American Classic Cinema.

Reviews

“Shot in New York in October and November [The Sleeping City was] Universal’s acknowledged follow-up to the Hellinger classic. Not only was Weegee once again hired to ‘expert’ the picture, but exhibitors were shamelessly exhorted to ‘tie in Sleeping with Naked.’...Bill Miller, the local cameraman on The Naked City, was brought back as director of photography on The Sleeping City, which was shot with an all New York crew….Exteriors were shot at recognizable New York landmarks – the Williamsburg Bridge, the Thirteenth Precinct police station, the Automat. ‘It’s the only way to produce pictures,’ Miller had told a reporter from the Times… ‘Audiences get tired of dressed-up stuff. They want to see something real. There’s never yet been a studio set that could give the same effect as the actual location.’”
– Richard Koszarski, “Keep ’em in the East”: Kazan, Kubrick, and the Postwar New York Film Renaissance