Capsule Reviews: While the City Sleeps, Cracking Up, The Kid, Rock of Ages

While the City Sleeps (Fritz Lang, 1956)

Fritz Lang's underseen noir blends the yellowest of journalism with King Lear in a prescient, savage view of media feeding a public frenzy. A news empire is offered to three successors, with the new kingdom to be ruled by the one who can beat the cops to solving the identity of a serial killer infamous only from the organization's own salacious coverage. Lang's framing is more stripped down than some other efforts but no less immaculate: the newsroom of transparent but isolating glass and roaring presses speak to the capacity of journalism to reveal and obscure, and how a giant conglomerate can drown out the truth instead of exposing it. As much as the actual string of murders, the tension operates on simple office politics, in which the promise of a raise and a title change to move up the modern social ladder can bring out the basest, most primitive behavior. The characterization of the sexually confused killer is oh-so-standard, but Lang's ability to make high style out of even the most basic movements and mise-en-scène combines with the otherwise fantastic story for a great anti-journo noir. Grade: A-

On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952)

[The following is a contribution to the Nicholas Ray Blog-A-Thon for Tony Dayoub's Cinema Viewfinder.]

After making two certifiable classics (his debut, They Live By Night and In a Lonely Place) out of his first six films, Nicholas Ray upped his batting average with On Dangerous Ground, the film that launched one of the great gold runs of cinema, a decade-plus level of quality that experienced only one or two aberrations while churning out masterpiece after masterpiece. Though it is not his best film, On Dangerous Ground points to the reason for Ray's upcoming string of quality by succinctly demonstrating his ability to spin prose into poetic, psychological beauty.

Establishing the film's mood is a vibrant opening inside a car speeding down darkened city streets. Over these shots plays Bernard Herrmann's music, which kicks off with verve. The music is fast and vigorous, like the scherzo of a sonata, a passionate explosion of sound that nevertheless hints at the darker, more dour moods to come. The next dominant sound to come through the mix is the blaring car horn of a detective summoning his two partners, both of whom react to the urgent, impossibly loud sound with complete calm and disinterest, getting everything ready before departing as the impatient man below continue to agitate the whole block. The lackadaisical response of these cops, who are meant to be tracking the murder of one of their own, belies the energy of Herrmann's opening blast, suggesting that the true passion lies underneath these cynical exteriors.