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The Naked City Film Noir Essay

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During the era of film noir, which encompasses the time period of the early 1940s to the late 1950s, featured numerous films that emphasized cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. However, Jules Dassin’s 1948 film, The Naked City, stood out amongst its competition. The film’s style ignores the usual expressiveness of noir characters, and replaces them with professional, dialed-in detectives. In comparison, another film noir movie, The Maltese Falcon, directed by John Hutson and released in 1941, casted a stereotypical noir protagonist Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart), in the sense that Spade is a tarnished hero who is not bound by the normal rules of morality. The Naked City was a truly unique in which it was able to focus on the theme of fakeness …show more content…

The film opens with an extreme long shot camera angle, which depicts a vast area from a great distance of New York City. Interestingly, the movie was not filmed in any studio lots or soundstage. In fact, hidden cameras were used to film much of the street action. These cameras were used to capture the essence of the city itself. Many of hidden cameras shot from a long distance, therefore capturing an entire area of action. The narrator of the film, Mark Hellinger, who was also the producer, poses several philosophical thoughts about the city while the lights are turning off at the respected area; “Does money ever sleep, I wonder [referring to the main floor of a large bank at night deserted]? Does a machine become tired [referring to night lights being casted over silent machines]? Or a song [empty street lit by only a few lights]? Does stone ever feel weariness [panning up to see a flat, monumental surface rising to the sky]?” Later in the film, Mark Hellinger states “and even this [referring to the two men walking to the edge of the pier], too, can be called routine in a city of eight million people.” I believe this was extremely important for Hellinger to highlight, to show that anyone can be doing anything, and that, in essence, creates

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