The Sleeping City (1950) YIFY - Download Movie TORRENT

Reviewed by bmacv 7 / 10

Who's killing the young interns at Bellevue? Richard Conte dons scrubs to find out

Two well-known titles in the noir cycle are The City That Never Sleeps (1953) and While The City Sleeps (1956). Before them, there was the less familiar The Sleeping City. In this last (or first), what seems asleep is not so much New York as a city-within-a-city the huge old fortress of Bellevue Hospital, where, at night in its wards and among its staff, skulduggery is afoot. Bellvue opened its doors to the film's cast and crew, perhaps not wholly grasping that the resulting portrait might be less than reassuring to prospective patients. But it's not a story, at least explicitly, about malpractice. A jumpy, distracted intern on his break goes outside to grab a smoke. He ends up with a bullet through his brain. Since the murder appears to be an inside job, an undercover department of the city police plants a detective (Richard Conte) in the hospital among the interns. He's had some medical training in the army and so should pass casual muster. Taking lodging in the building and going on rounds, he makes acquaintances. Among them are his bitter roommate, Alex Nichol, nursing some resentments about not being rich, either by birth or through wedlock; ward nurse Coleen Gray, raising a young son from an unhappy first marriage; and chummy elevator operator Richard Taber, who bunks down off the boiler room where he runs a book where the cash-strapped interns can play the ponies. What Conte's after is not just the killer but the source of an infectious but non-microbial malaise that will claim Nichol, too, the night before he was to marry. Conte finds himself the prime suspect in his roommate's death and comes close to blowing his cover before his own superiors intervene. But Conte's suspicions about Taber's bookmaking operation aren't quite on the mark; it turns out that a 'white-stuff job' is the real racket....Light and portable equipment developed during World War II made location shooting finally feasible, and the low-budget second-features in the post-war years pioneered its use. The Sleeping City affects a pseudo-documentary style that also came into vogue as a complement to the new cinema-verité look (a chase through the bowels of the massive institution stays particularly sinister). Despite a nifty shot of the new interns descending an endless stairwell en masse, the vast hospital looks underpopulated, especially during the graveyard shift. But the claustrophobia (the whole picture is shot in and around the hospital) pays off. The main characters aren't many, but not so few that they can't deliver a final twist.

Reviewed by

Reviewed by dballtwo 8 / 10

Where There's Smoke

This novel crime film set entirely in Bellvue Hospital in NYC is more interesting for its picture of intern life at mid-century than for its farfetched premise of a police detective planted inside the institution as a physician to try to catch a murderer. Realistic location shooting enjoyed a vogue in the late 40's and early 50's, and undoubtedly Bellvue was well compensated for extending its hospitality to Hollywood. It's also a reminder of how much cigarette smoking was an accepted "relaxant" in those days, even for the medical profession. Among numerous tobacco moments, Nurse Coleen Gray urges undercover man Richrd Conte to step outside for "a cigarette and a breath of fresh air," as though one went hand in hand with the other. Although that kind of thing seems ridiculous now, in an age of idiotic comic book and video game movies, it's a pleasure to watch a film performed on an intimately human scale.

The Sleeping City

1950

Action / Crime / Drama / Film-Noir / Mystery

The Sleeping City

1950

Action / Crime / Drama / Film-Noir / Mystery

Please enable your VPΝ when downloading torrents

Plot summary

Director

Top cast

Tech specs

Movie Reviews

Who's killing the young interns at Bellevue? Richard Conte dons scrubs to find out

Where There's Smoke

No comments yet