There Are Eight Million Stories in the Naked City. Jules Dassin's Was One of Them.

By S.T. VanAirsdale

The Reeler today mourns Jules Dassin, the Connecticut-born actor-writer-director whose blacklisted exile to Europe deprived America of one of the era's foremost poets of urban cinema. Dassin's police procedural The Naked City won an Oscar in 1948 for its street-level cinematography of New York; his depiction of a shattered London in Night and the City (1950) and the haunted Paris of Rififi (1955) refined the masterful use of city and location as character that he would explore further in Never on Sunday (with his wife and frequent collaborator Melina Mercouri), Topkapi, La Legge and Up Tight!

Below, the closing sequence of The Naked City. Dassin was 96.

[H/T: Movie City Indie]

Posted at April 1, 2008 6:55 AM