Dana Andrews stars as a cynical reporter in Fritz Lang’s WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (courtesy Photofest)
WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (Fritz Lang, 1956)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, April 23
The Newspaper Picture series continues through May 6
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
When media magnate Amos Kynes (Robert Warwick) dies, his son Walter (Vincent Price) takes over despite Amos’s greatest fears. Walter decides that whoever gets a scoop on the Lipstick Killer will become his number two man, so the backstabbing race is on among sleazy wire service chief Mark Loving (George Sanders); managing editor Jon Day Griffith (Thomas Mitchell), who’ll do just about anything for a story; and Harry Kritzer (James Craig), who thinks the best way to get the job is from the bed of Walter’s wife (Rhonda Fleming). Throw in cynical television journalist Ed Mobley (Dana Andrews) and hot-to-trot columnist Mildred Donner (Ida Lupino) and you have another one of Hollywood’s terrific newspaper pics. Director Fritz Lang pulls no punches; the film is filled with plenty of sexual undertones (and overtones), and Kynes himself is a take-off of Charles Foster Kane, the glistening K atop his New York City skyscraper reminiscent of the K atop Xanadu’s front gate.
WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS is screening on April 23 in a double feature with Boris Ingster’s 1940 film noir STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR, starring Elisha Cook Jr. and Peter Lorre, as part of Film Forum’s “The Newspaper Picture,” which continues through May 6 with such films as HIS GIRL FRIDAY (Howard Hawks, 1940) on April 24, MEET JOHN DOE (Frank Capra, 1941) on April 26, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941) on April 29, and ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (Alan J. Pakula, 1976) on May 6.