While the City Sleeps

Suspense as startling as a strangled scream!
While the City Sleeps
7.9K ratings
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Format:  DVD-R
item number:  FGAK
Made-on-Demand
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DVD-R Details

  • Run Time: 1 hours, 39 minutes
  • Video: Black & White
  • Encoding: Region 0 (Worldwide)
  • Released: May 13, 2011
  • Originally Released: 1956
  • Label: Warner Archive Collection (MOD)

Performers, Cast and Crew:

Starring , , , , &
Performer: , , , , , , &
Directed by
Edited by
Screenplay by
Composition by
Art Direction by
Produced by
Director of Photography:

Entertainment Reviews:

Fresh89%

TOMATOMETER
Total Count: 18

Upright67%

AUDIENCE SCORE
User Ratings: 886
Plot intricacies are deftly interwoven, with director Fritz Lang doing a topflight job of balancing the ingredients without dragging the pace. Full Review
Variety
Mar 26, 2009
Rating: 4/4 -- Lang's finest film since The Big Heat and his last great success, While the City Sleeps is a crime drama sending its lead actors on a twisted, dog-eat-dog journey into the underworld in their quest for success. Full Review
TV Guide
Oct 15, 2014
Rating: 3.5/5 -- It may not be in the same league as Metropolis, M or The Big Heat, but there are enough interesting elements to make it worthy of rediscovery. Full Review
Future Movies UK
Sep 11, 2010
Rating: A- -- One of Fritz Lang's last and best American film noir, the plot is complex and involving, and the visual style clear and extremely effective Full Review
EmanuelLevy.Com
Dec 23, 2010
Fritz Lang's fabulously cynical noir-inflected thriller is as much a satire on media machinations as an old-fashioned detective story...
Sight and Sound
Nov 1, 2010
3 stars out of 5 -- Fritz Lang's penultimate US film revisits the subject of his first sound film, M....Easy to admire...
Total Film
Aug 31, 2010
The story is a cynical twist on Lang's famous M. Full Review
Chicago Reader
Oct 15, 2014

Description by OLDIES.com:

"Ask mother," says the message scrawled in lipstick at a murder scene by an unknown serial killer who preys on women. It's a sensational story -- if it bleeds, it leads -- and a news conglomerate offers a big promotion to the high-level company exec who solves the case. So begins the wheeling, dealing and backstabbing of the competing media hotshots as they vie to unmask the so-called Lipstick Killer.

Fritz Lang (The Big Heat), whose early-career expressionist works would strongly influence the film-noir genre, directs this stylistically understated noir that features an abundance of starpower rare for the genre: Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Thomas Mitchell, Vincent Price, Ida Lupino and other notables.

Product Description:

WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS is one of Fritz Lang's must successful American movies and a classic of the psychological Noir genre. It is not merely a thriller, but rather a multi-layered vision of the power and problems both of the press and of humanity's all-encompassing greed. The editor of a flailing New York City paper dies just as a series of sex murders sweep the city. His dastardly son (Vincent Price) takes over the paper and pits three rival editors against each other in a contest to see which one of them can crack the case and identify the killer. As the murderer continues to stalk the city's women, the reporters go all out to catch him in hopes of securing the top spot at the newspaper. While several of the editors use their girlfriends to bait the killer, airing taunting television spots attempting to rouse his anger, Lang paints a portrait of professional greed and moral weakness in the face of physical danger. Set both in stark glass-walled newspaper offices and in the dark and dense streets of New York City, the killer's crimes take a back seat to the film's focus on the dog-eat-dog race of the three editors to win the favor of the newspaper's owner.

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This product is made-on-demand by the manufacturer using DVD-R recordable media. Almost all DVD players can play DVD-Rs (except for some older models made before 2000) - please consult your owner's manual for formats compatible with your player. These DVD-Rs may not play on all computers or DVD player/recorders. To address this, the manufacturer recommends viewing this product on a DVD player that does not have recording capability.
Studio Vaults
Warner Archive Collection

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Product Info

  • Sales Rank: 19,275
  • UPC: 883316270615
  • Shipping Weight: 0.27/lbs (approx)
  • International Shipping: 1 item

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