A woman is found dead in her bed by her cleaning lady which appears to be a suicide until the New York City police detectives take over the case and work it like a homicide. The venerable Irish actor Barry Fitzgerald is lead Detective Lt. Daniel Muldoon who needs all his wits about him as well as the assistance of all of his detectives to crack this case.There are a number of suspects with motives to investigate and in a semi-documentary style the audience is fed clues gradually as we follow behind the hard working detectives as they interview the cast of suspects. A key suspect is a playboy hustler named Frank Niles who is played by a very young and good looking Howard Duff in his second movie role.This is a film genre that has been lost (more likely extinct) to todays movie goers due in most part to film content and story line taking a back seat to today's Super Hero and Action films that are filled more with CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) than with an intriguing story line. Ten years after the 1948 film release of The Naked City the television producers over at ABC made a brilliant move and were successful in running 138 epsiodes over the next four (4) seasons. Even seventy (70) years later I still enjoyed watching this classic 1948 crime film classic .I give the film a solid 8 out of 10 rating/

"There are eight million stories in New York City," intones the narrator, "and this is just one of them." Not all stories are as gripping as this one, though. The Naked City is a tough-as-nails detective noir (there are two murders in the first five minutes) from Jules "Rififi" Dassin, and it delivers all the suspicion, salaciousness, and shooting one could hope for – albeit not much more.As with his previous film, the prison drama Brute Force, Dassin is plunging us into a brutal underworld, although this time we're watching events from the perspective of the cops, led by Lieutenant Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald), as they investigate the murder of a female model. Suspects come and go, with some really dodgy ones thrown in as red herrings, before the culprit takes his pursuers on a tour of New York landmarks.Claiming to present the city "as it is", Dassin shot the film largely without sets, giving the exterior scenes in particular an unusual (for 1948) sense of authenticity. The same can't be said of the performances, which are wildly melodramatic at times, although in the lead role Fitzgerald brings a typically wicked dry wit.The script might lack the sharpness of a true classic such as Double Indemnity, and the dialogue could have done with some hard boiling by the likes of Jim "The Killing" Thompson, but the film ebbs and flows admirably, daring to portray detective work as an imperfect science. For every revelation or clue there's a mad man or woman claiming they killed Jean Dexter. At one point the investigation comes to a shuddering halt as the men claw for leads. But it's all in the service of a tremendous third act, which ramps up the pace, and leads to a brilliantly composed chase 'em up finale, of which a certain Mr Hitchcock would have been proud.What stops The Naked City from matching Hitch's finest work is a lack of anything to really distinguish it from the crowd. The absurdly verbose narrator pushes the idea that it is, in a sense, the ugly city itself that's killed beautiful Jean, but it's a theme that never fully convinces in what we're actually shown. The film does come to life in a handful of individual scenes – such as a visit to the mortuary, where Jean's mother decries her daughter before crying for her; or a confrontation with a rabbit-punching ex-wrestler – but overall there's little here not done before, bar a documentary-style conceit hardly plundered."It's a heavy case," we're told more than once, and it's a heavy film. Unsentimental and intensely talky (until that last act), it's a well-constructed, if ultimately unremarkable, police procedural in which to sink on a Sunday afternoon.

What a thrilling film with so many slice of life scenes from New York. BARRY FITZGERALD is faultless as the wily lieutenant Dan Muldoon. What a wonderful actor. DON TAYLOR as the earnest Jimmy Halloran is the perfect foil for FITZGERALD. The whole team of detectives was terrific. They came across like they worked together for their whole lives. A lot of the people on the films board was irritated by the producer's narration, that was almost like a running commentary for the events in the movie. But i thought it was a nice touch. The makers back in the day were seriously innovative.This is probably my second favorite JULES DASSIN movie after RIFIFI. He really is a master of these orgasmic climaxes. It is just terrific how he builds them up.(10/10)

Amid a semi-documentary portrait of New York and its people, Jean Dexter, an attractive blonde model, is murdered in her apartment. Homicide detectives Dan Muldoon and Jimmy Halloran investigate.I have to give this film credit for pushing boundaries in the 1940s. Maybe I am wrong and maybe this was not a big deal -- after all, there is not actually any nudity or explicit murder -- but it had a gritty feel to it and when one man cracks a joke about a girl killed in the bathtub, that just seemed in poor taste.The mystery is good, and I like watching detectives track down the suspects. It does not take Charlie Chan to solve a murder this nasty and heinous, but it does take Muldoon and Halloran, who are some of the top cops out there!