While the City Sleeps was one of the last films that legendary director Fritz Lang created in America before he returned to his native Germany in the late 1950s. As such, it feels like a film made by a tired director who has grown weary of working within the suffocating confines of the Hollywood studio system. That's not to say that it's a bad film...it just doesn't live up to the high caliber of his best work. It pales in comparison to his proto-noir like Fury and his ultimate genre masterpiece The Big Heat. The film is advertised as being about a serial killer referred to as the "Lipstick Killer." However, it is more concerned with the newspapermen who cover it; quite literally the people who work while the city sleeps. After the death of a mighty newspaper magnate, his foppish son decides to let his three department heads duke it out for control of the company. The son turns the investigation of the Lipstick Killer into a competition: if one of the department heads is able to identify the killer before the police, they will gain control over the company. But the real star isn't one of the department heads. Instead, it is high-profile reporter Edward Mobley. In a turn that serves as a perfect example of Fritzian cynicism, Mobley goes on national television and mocks the Lipstick Killer before offering up his fiance Nancy Liggett as bait. Of course, he doesn't consult Nancy before he offers her life up. Overall, While the City Sleeps is a film that doesn't quite seem to know what it wants to be. Is it a serial killer flick? A police (or reporter) procedural? Is it a romantic melodrama? There are times when films are able to balance all of these themes. While the City Sleeps is not one of them.
6/10
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