City That Never Sleeps

John H. Auer’s City That Never Sleeps is an oddly uneven film that still enthralls the viewer like a pinball ricocheting through a landscape of established noir ingredients. Set in Chicago, despite the title’s reference to New York City’s nickname at the time, a dream-like opening voice-over (echoing as if from inside a tin can) is said to be the voice of Chicago itself, introducing the city’s denizens a la The Naked City (1948). One of those denizens, Johnny Kelly (Gig Young), is planning to leave his job on the police force and his wife (and her mother-in-law’s annoying, disembodied voice from the bedroom) to run off with nightclub performer Sally Connors (Mala Powers), who’s also the love interest of Gregg Warren (Wally Cassell), who performs outside the club as a “mechanical man” whose humanity spectators are meant to doubt (“Ask yourself whether he’s real or whether he’s all coils and springs”). When Johnny is lured into an intricate, corrupt plot by attorney Penrod Biddel (Edward Arnold), characters start getting killed; not only is Johnny’s life endangered, but so is that of Gregg, who witnesses a related murder while performing as the moving mannequin. The plot is dense, the tone is dark, and the cinematography is often obscurely beautiful, particularly during the final sequence, a chase through the rail yards during which one character is trapped in the couple feet of space between two passing trains at high speed. It’s an offbeat film that’s far more interesting than it’s budget would imply.