Review: “While the City Sleeps” – Rhonda Fleming (Summer Under the Stars #10)

Schedule:

• The Big Circus
• The Crowded Sky
• The Revolt of the Slaves
• Alias Jesse James
• Gun Glory
• Home Before Dark
• Out of the Past
• While the City Sleeps
• The Killer is Loose
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
• Serpent of the Nile
• The Golden Hawk
• Odongo

Film Review

After his father dies, Walter Kyne (Vincent Price) challenges his the staff of his new outlet to catch a serial killer that is prowling the streets of New York City. Whoever succeeds first gets a highly coveted job.

While the City Sleeps committed one of the only universal sins of filmmaking: it was deadly boring. Made even more disappointing by the fact that it wasted such a stacked cast, boasting players such as Ida Lupino, Vincent Price, Dana Andrews, and Thomas Mitchell.

The story waffled between a multitude of topics including adultery, murder, mommy issues, toxic workplace environments, and alcholism – yet never committed to anything. There were way too many characters and different plot points to pay attention to and everything got lost in the shuffle. Today’s star, Rhonda Fleming, only had about a total of three scenes and played one of the more interesting characters, Price’s wife who is having an affair with one of her husband’s employees.

The three women (Fleming, Lupino, and Sally Forrest) were the most intriguing characters and I felt all three actors took their roles seriously. The men in the cast seemed to either be sleep-walking through the film or overacting to a cringe-inducing degree.

Dana Andrews was reportedly drunk throughout the entire shoot, which was extremely apparent; he mumbled all of his lines and never seemed to be fully present. I’ll admit that I don’t get his appeal as a leading man anyway, and felt his character was the least interesting out of the entire ensemble.

I also struggle with a majority of films’ depictions of serial killers and found While the City Sleeps‘ approach to be incredibly clumsy. It ended up taking a backseat to everything else in the movie, despite the fact that the murders of innocent women were the catalyst for the whole plot. It was just disrespectful to put the stories of misogynistic men being drunk all the time over the brutal murders of women who don’t receive any screentime. And the movie was based on true events, to boot.

Weirdly, I would have preferred the film just be a relationship drama and not have engaged the serial killer plot at all. Or it should have taken that aspect of the story seriously and really committed to the gritty noir elements that it dabbled in slightly. I think revealing who the killer was in the opening scene was also a mistake, leaving no room for suspense or thrills.

It really just came down to the fact that the film attempted to do way too many things, paired with the misuse or miscasting of several actors that caused it to be a messy and unfortunately bland final product.

Final Thoughts

Fleming’s Performance: Although unfairly underutilized, Fleming was quite memorable and I’m curious to check out more of her work now.

Would I Recommend? This might be up someone’s alley, I seem to be one of the few people out there that dislikes the film. I will say that it was interesting to see so many big names interacting with each other.

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