Cry of the City is a dark crime melodrama, filmed on location in New York City in voluptuous black and white by a director whose name is synonymous with the era of classic film noir. It was planned as a follow-up to Kiss of Death, a big hit for Twentieth Century Fox the previous year.
Martin Rome (Richard Conte) drives the law crazy - he is a beautiful loser, defying death, the great charismatic anti-hero of Siodmak's masterpiece of law and disorder. Adapted from a novel by Henry Edward Helseth, Cry of the City tells the tale of a charismatic New York criminal and his nemesis, the dogged cop and one-time friend who chases him down with a neurotic possessiveness as though in pursuit of his own evil twin.
Richard Conte's dazzling performance as Rome conveys a seductive ruthlessness opposite the brawny Victor Mature - a Fox favourite following his powerful performance in Kiss of Death - as Lieutenant Candella, the 'good guy' in the film's running battle between good and evil. They are supported by a brilliant cast including Debra Paget, Shelley Winters, and the mesmerising, scene-stealing Hope Emerson in her most original and remarkable role as a thieving murderess.
Kiss of Death
Kiss of Death is a semi-documentary thriller, one of a cycle of documentary-based noirs, which began life not as pulp fiction but as a version of the facts, derived from the case files of Eleazar Lipsky, an aspiring novelist and Manhattan Assistant District Attorney. Ben Hecht, screenwriter of The Front Page and Scarface, and Charles Lederer, a frequent collaborator, delivered the script.
Sharing with the later On the Waterfront (1954) the theme of heroic informing, the film was a huge hit for Fox. The giggling psycho killer, the old lady in the wheelchair pushed down the stairs - this is the film wherein Richard Widmark became a star, Victor Mature became an actor, sadism came to the big screen and Hollywood neorealism got tangled in the dreamscape of noir.
Richard Widmark, then a radio actor, made his film debut, stealing every frame as the terrifying, grinning, snickering killer Tommy Udo. Udo, with his animal ferocity and vicious joie de vivre, is clearly a spiritual nephew of Scarface's Tony Camonte, but Widmark himself is to be credited with many of the inspired details of his performance.
Extras:
- Interview with Richard Widmark
- Original theatrical trailer, presented by famed commentator Walter Winchell
- Fully illustrated booklet
- Essay by author Lee Server
- Interview with director Henry Hathaway
