1956 - WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS, one of Fritz Lang's final American films

One of the last films that Fritz Lang directed before he wrapped up the American phase of his career.  While the City Sleeps has some good and not so good stuff in it.  Lang had to juggle two separate stories, the search for a creepy serial killer and the machinations of a group of executives to gain control over a large Murdock like news organization.

At this point in his career Lang was sick of the film business, tired of dealing with stupid producers and studios.  Lang was always a dictatorial difficult personality to deal with on a film set and like Orson Welles struggled to play the game.  Lang's film budgets got less and less as he descended into "B" movies.  While the City Sleeps isn't exactly a "B" film but it does look kind of cheap.

The film has a good old school Hollywood cast, Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Thomas Mitchell, Ida Lupino and Howard Duff.  If they weren't exactly on the "A" list they were all seasoned professionals. 

Lang was still good at the crime stuff, the creepy serial killer with a "mama's boy" fixation, the actual killings, a good chase in the subway chase scene.  What Lang seems uninterested in is the board room drama of who will control the news corporation which takes up the major part of the film.

Also, kind of dramatically suspect is the behavior of the reporter played by Dana Andrews who goes out of his way to provoke the serial killer through his news stories.  At one point Andrews even uses his fiancee as a decoy to draw out the killer. 

The amount of drinking that goes on in this film is amusing to watch,  people are constantly drinking and drinking a lot, Andrews goes out to lunch and just doesn't have one drink he has about four, it's hard to believe anyone could even function at their jobs during the afternoon.

In spite of its flaws, I would still put While the City Sleeps a lot higher than the overrated The Big Heat.

100 minutes