Cebalord Very best movie i ever watch

Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

Nonureva Really Surprised!

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

grantss Okay, but not great, drama. From master crime-drama director Fritz Lang, the movie centres on the machinations and office politics of a media company during a murderer's killing spree.The crime aspect is good, as you would expect from Lang. He builds the tension well, and keeps you intrigued throughout. Even though the identity of the murderer is revealed fairly early, this does not diminish the suspense.The office politics side, however, is mostly quite dull. The machinations are hardly that appalling (at least not by today's standards). If Lang was trying to make a point about (the lack of) ethics in the media (or business in general), he missed the mark.Good performance by Dana Andrews in the lead role. Solid supporting cast.

Michael Neumann Fritz Lang's personal favorite of all his films is, unfortunately, not his best, but he adds a cynical twist to the familiar story of a psychopath pursued by a headline-hungry press by showing more sympathy for the Freudian torments of the killer than for the scheming newsmen out to apprehend him. No one is completely innocent, least of all the supposedly white-hatted journalists, who would rather compete for personal kudos than bring a serial killer to justice: sharks in a feeding frenzy exhibit better ethics. Goodness prevails, in the guise of square-jawed hero Dana Andrews, but the film is sparked more by the presence of Vincent Price as the Machiavellian, milquetoast media tycoon who exploits 'the lipstick murders', and by Ida Lupino as a gossip column queen willing to sell her soul to the highest bidder. The actress couldn't have had much choice about her role: in film noir women were usually relegated to playing good girls or tough cookies, and the former position was already filled.

jzappa Media mogul Amos Kyne dies at the inception of a juicy item about a sex killer designated the Lipstick Killer. Amos orders his newspaper chief to hustle all out with that story. Amos's megacorp domain is comprised of a major newspaper, a television station, and a wire news service. It's bequeathed to his singular beneficiary, his pariah son Vincent Price, who hits the ground running to establish that he's not his father's imbecile offspring by devising a new top executive position to act as his man Friday and run the whole enterprise, and grants the candidacy to be among the city editor played with Thomas Mitchell's infectious presence, the head of the wire service played with George Sanders' Transatlantic adaptation of his unabashedly British persona, and the photo editor played with James Craig's old-fashioned American masculinity. The plotting Sanders and the factotum Mitchell egotistically vie for the job and struggle to crack the headline murder case, feeling that the one who solves that case will get the job. At the same time, Craig is having an affair with Walter's eye-popping wife Rhonda Fleming, and hopes to get the job through her seductive wiles. Pulitzer-winning reporter and the station's commentator, played by the always appealing laid-back Dana Andrews, is unwilling to get involved, but after all does and signs on to help his close friend Mitchell.Fritz Lang's 22nd English-language film, which itself, interestingly, is a conglomeration of film noir, psychological thriller and sociopolitical drama, is a complete observation of the modern media. It applies to a media empire which merges newspapers, wire services, photography and television. All of these come under acute and generally cynical analysis in this film. The utter notion that so many different media are all amalgamated in one company scares this film's forever socially concerned director Fritz Lang, who sees the makings of fascistic tyranny here, something of which his own first-hand experience surely made him particularly wary.The K symbol that is everywhere in While the City Sleeps as the insignia of a media empire. One recalls that in real life, the CBS eye was part of the first successful corporate logo and corporate identity crusade of any modern corporation. It is intriguing that Lang, with his eye consistently scanning for the cutting edge of communications, would give the media empire in his film such a syndicated characteristic. Real corporate media offices look significantly flashier than the dishwater headquarters of the media in Lang's film.The media show up in other, more esoteric ways, as well. The bar is rife with photographs, ostensibly of celebrities who've stopped off at it. The photo-viewer maneuvered by Ida Lupino, who plays Sanders' star journalist with detached intensity, evinces Lang's strong interest in new media. Even the car chase at the end of the film involves a car knocking over a mailbox, part of the broadcasting framework of contemporary civilization.Somehow the killer, who is psychologically troubled and cannot help himself, is treated in a more sensitive depiction than any of the cutthroat newspaper people. He is played by John Drew Barrymore in a vivacious and edgy performance. He is sporadically seen, but with intrigue as we almost always see him alone, and even once at his home with his mother, a wrenchingly sad scene. Even the story's apparently most upright character, Dana Andrews, utilizes his girlfriend to get what he wants, which is not necessarily worlds apart from what Craig's character does. The essence of the story is seen through the glass-walled newspaper offices and all the deceitful day-to-day goings-on there are disclosed, as Lang secures his most severe reckoning on the indiscriminately aggressive newspaper people who could so easily forfeit their dignity for control, fanfare and affluence.

dougdoepke A few years earlier, RKO would have shaved the sub-plots and made the kind of tight little noir the studio was so good at. A decade earlier, cult director Lang would have shaved the sub-plots and made the kind of nifty study in perverse psychology he was so good at. But this is 1956 and TV is replacing the B-movie. So a budget studio like RKO is especially scrambling for a new formula. Unfortunately, what they come up with here is a sprawling story with a bunch of hard-to-follow subplots and a cast of aging stars for marquee appeal. The result is a turgid 100-plus minutes and, except for Andrews and Mitchell, a waste of some very fine actors.Maybe you can follow the power plays going on among the eight or so cast principals. After a while, I gave up. Folks interested in newspaper stories might find the movie worthwhile. To me, however, the various machinations come across as little more than glorified soap opera in dull shades of gray. The movie does come to life when Lipstick Killer Barrymore Jr. comes on screen and the palaver pauses for a refreshing few minutes. Too bad, the screenplay didn't allow Lang to focus more on one of his specialties, the killer's interesting mental state. But then, the script had to multiply the sub-plots and the superfluous scenes so as to accommodate the various star cameos they were paying for. There may be a good story buried somewhere in the pottage, and there are some snappy lines, but the overall result lumbers along, Lang or no Lang. Speaking of censorship, the curvaceous Fleming's various poses and sexy calisthenics, along with the script's smirking innuendo, typifies how the industry was reacting to the challenge of TV despite Production Code constraints, and definitely dates the production to that era. In passing—is it my imagination or does the circle-K logo of Kyne enterprises duplicate the logo for Kane's publishing empire in the much superior Citizen Kane (1940), and if so, what would be the point? Also, "kine" is an archaic term for cows, just as "swine" is for pigs. Was that intentional, and if so, what would be the point of that? Anyway, the movie shows clearly RKO's floundering efforts during a period of general studio decline.