In Ian Frazier’s book Coyote vs. Acme, there’s a deeply strange piece which appears to be the script of a play, except all the characters are various places. In 1953 noir City That Never Sleeps, Chill Willis plays the city of Chicago. We first hear him, as the city, waxing pretentiously about what happens at night in what is allegedly the city that never sleeps. Maybe it was the sparkly lettering in the titles keeping everybody awake. Also, what would Chicago know about what happens in New York City, as everybody knows that is truly the city which never sleeps.
Then he invites us to meet his citizens. There’s Wally Cassell, who plays a robotic man in the window display of a club. There’s William Talman as a former magician who has changed careers to be a criminal. There’s Gig Young as a married cop who is having an affair with dancer Mala Powers. His younger brother (Ron Hagerthy) is, unbeknownst to him, hired by Edward Arnold to intercept Talman robbing the safe in Arnold’s office at exactly 1 am. Arnold does not realize Talman is involved with Arnold’s wife (Marie Windsor).
There are few too many plot threads, yet the film handles them deftly. Admittedly, I found I wasn’t invested in any of these characters, and was flat-out annoyed by Willis, who will materialize as the partner of Young for only this night. He will be a kind of conscience and guardian angel, trying to steer the officer back onto the straight and narrow.
In addition to all the usual, obligatory noir developments, this one has some unusual quirks. Most interesting is Talman’s character. We first see him in his apartment as Hagerthy watches him do an odd trick, putting a rabbit in a hat and then pulling a gun out of it. I’d love to see him do that bit at children’s birthday parties. What happens with the theft from the safe is interesting, as Talman cracks it, only to discover this note: “You utter fool! Who did you think you were dealing with?” The “utter” is an odd touch. If only it had been “udder” and written by a mischievous cow right out of a Far Side cartoon.
There is also some interesting suspense as he tries to leave that building while Young and Willis are going floor-by-floor in their search for him. In one especially interesting shot towards the end, the villain will lose Young by standing between two El trains going in opposite directions, and there is very little space between them. The movie’s most suspenseful moment has Talman closely observing Cassell’s mechanical man routine, trying to figure out if this is only an automaton or a real man who has witnessed him commit a murder.
The movie makes good use of real locations, and I don’t have anything negative to say about the photography. I assume the club Powers dances in was real, but I suspect the dancers didn’t wear anywhere near as much clothing as they do here. I imagine the men didn’t bother yelling for them to take if off, because they probably had other places to be in the next 24 hours. We’re talking a lot of clothing.
There’s also some additional business concerning Young. I’m surprised there is so little crime that he and Willis have time to break up a small, back-alley craps game. Then, when Young is at home, he and wife Paula Raymond are constantly insulted by her mother, a person who is, as far as we know, only a disembodied voice coming from the kitchen. I like to think there isn’t really a mother, that this is instead a shared hallucination. Maybe there’s a skeleton in a dress in there, like Norman Bates’s mother. The voice here does the same kind of nagging as Perkins-as-mother in Psycho.
There is also much that left me scratching my head. I know this was a common plot element in films of the time, but I was appalled by Raymond’s decision to quit her job because Young is insecure about her making more money than him. Then there’s the dancing Powers does in a solo number, which looked to me only like she was trying to move off the stage after one leg fell asleep. That, or she had just had a stroke, and was trying to exit gracefully.
City That Never Sleeps is a curious construction and noble in that it attempts to be a thoughtful and meditative noir. Alas, it doesn’t succeed, and only feels awkward and preachy. I was amused by how quickly Young tires of Willis’s pontifications and moralizing, as I was way ahead of him on that count. And yet, we never learn from Willis what I most wanted to know the city of Chicago might think, and that is: does it agree with everybody outside the city that deep dish pizza is awful?
Dir: John H. Auer
Starring Gig Young, Mala Powers, Chill Willis, William Talman
Watched as part of Kino Lorber’s blu-ray box set Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XXIV