This movie was already moving too slow for me when it came to the scene with the cops interrogating their main suspect: the old man janitor. They state in their questioning that the drug store delivery guy came to the first victim's apartment at 8:00. Yet they, and the newsmen, focus solely on the old janitor while seemingly paying no attention to the drug store deliverer.I have a very high regard for Fritz Lang's work, the film noir genre and this movie's cast. I just couldn't get past this wtf police work. Also, as a previous reviewer noted, Dana Andrews plays an annoyingly unconvincing drunk.

A serial killer is on the loose leaving the words "Ask Mother" at a crime scene. Sickly media mogul Amos Kyne is taken with the story calling the killer "The Lipstick Killer". Amos dies leaving the company in the hands of his feckless son Walter Kyne (Vincent Price) who assigns the story to the various heads of the media conglomerate. He creates a new title Executive Director to run the whole corporation for him pitting his news teams against each other for the scoop. Mark Loving runs the Kyne news wire service and recruits gossip columnist Mildred Donner (Ida Lupino). On the other team, Jon Day Griffith runs the newspaper New York Sentinel. Edward Mobley (Dana Andrews) is the star TV reporter dating Loving's secretary Nancy Liggett. Mobley insults the killer on the air while announcing his engagement to Nancy to lure the killer out.For me, there is simply too much going on. The movie starts with a serial killer and I assumed this is a crime drama. Then the newspaper politics and intrigue begin. It's sometimes fun. It's sometimes chaotic. The portrayal of the killer as he listened to Mobley is disappointing. He's not threatening. He's not scary. I would have been more interested in the inter-corporate rivalries if they're not talking about a serial killer. The seriousness of the murders don't match the chaotic fun of the news rivals.

One night in New York City, leather-clad delivery man John Barrymore Jr. (as Robert Manners) bludgeons to death a young woman as she gets into her bathtub. Relax, it occurs off-screen. The perpetrator a mother-fixated "Psycho" serial killer, targeting women who order feminine accessories from the drugstore. The sensational story of "The Lipstick Killer" is circulation gold for newspapers, with occasionally intoxicated "Sentinel" reporter Dana Andrews (as Edward "Ed" Mobley) getting the big scoops. Taking advantage of the situation, media mogul Vincent Price (as Walter Kyne), decides to promote his best worker to a financially rewarding position. Vying for the job are managing editor Thomas Mitchell (as John Day Griffith), wire service head George Sanders (as Mark Loving) and top photographer James Craig (as "Honest" Harry Kritzer)..."While the City Sleeps" boasts a great group of characters, taken from Charles Einstein's original story "The Bloody Spur" and kept lively by Casey Robinson's screenplay. They intertwine well, as directed by Fritz Lang. He moves everyone around multiple sets and a shadowy subway terminal. Sexy female roles go to fashion conscious Ida Lupino (as Mildred Donner), double dipping Rhonda Fleming (as Dorothy Kyne), and tightly attired Sally Forrest (as Nancy Liggett). A weakness is, however, that the "chemistry" between various players doesn't always work; the individual stars seem greater than the sum. The best couple is formed by Ms. Lupino and Mr. Andrews, but sparks aren't often flying like they should. In smaller roles, "silent" film stars Mae Marsh (the killer's mother) and Robert Warwick (the expiring Kyne) are used exceptionally well.******* While the City Sleeps (5/16/56) Fritz Lang ~ Dana Andrews, Thomas Mitchell, John Drew Barrymore, Ida Lupino

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.