2007 #112
Jules Dassin | 92 mins | DVD | PG
Jules Dassin | 92 mins | DVD | PG
Police procedural film noir, shot entirely on location in New York (unusual at the time).
The story is quite straightforward — girl is murdered, police investigate — but it exists mainly as a structure on which to hang perspectives of the city, its criminals and its law enforcement (though in an infinitely less pretentious way than that sounds). The odd, character-less voice-over narration is more puzzling than any mystery in the plot.
The acting is sometimes stilted and some of the direction is actually a little flat, but there are enough enjoyable elements to cover for it — particularly the chance to see so much footage of a real city at this time.
100Films.co.uk 
A very influential movie and one I like a lot. I watched the Arrow Blu-ray a few months back and it looks very fine indeed.
I also got a bit of a kick out of seeing myself name-checked in the acknowledgments in the accompanying booklet.
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That is pretty nifty! I picked up that Blu-ray in a sale recently, actually — I’ve been meaning to re-watch the film for quite a while; I suspect I’ll get more out of it now than I did eight years ago (even though I gave it 4/5). It’s still in its cellophane right now though…
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