The Naked City (1948)

  I blew off last week entirely because I was doing Christmas shit.  I kept trying to watch Sunshine on Hulu but "And Then There Were None" set in space was too stressful.  This weekend is going a little better.  95% of all my preparations are done.  Okay, maybe 90%.  Fuck, 85%.  We're going to stop thinking about this!

A woman has been murdered in New York City.  Lieutenant Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) and his rookie Halloran (Don Taylor) are assigned the case.  They pound the pavement, question suspects, follow leads no matter how thin.  They won't rest until a killer (or two) is brought to justice.

This is the granddaddy of police movies.  You can see the echoes of it in a thousand later films and TV shows.  "There's eight million stories in the naked city.  And this is one of them."  Even J. P. McGillicuddy, a thing I thought my dad made up, is from this movie.  Shot on location (mostly), the film is deeply indebted to the idea of New York City as a character.  It goes to lengths that seem a little transparent now to convince the viewer that everyone in the film is a real citizen, not an actor, even though it's probably the same number of extras as any other NYC film.

Even without the gimmicks, this is a great whodunit that never loses its airy feel.  Fitzgerald is wonderful as the twinkly-eyed, pipe-smoking lieutenant, alternating between Old Irish charm and steel.  Not all of the jokes still land because times have changed in seventy years but the ones that do are great.  It is an excellent, easy-day kind of movie.  Maybe it's raining and you need something fresh but still comforting.  Maybe you've baked eight dozen cookies and you need something that doesn't beep at you every ten minutes.  No judgment.  

It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and on HBO Max.