City That Never Sleeps

Johnny Kelly is a beat cop in Chicago, sick of his job and of his marriage. He thinks about leaving the city with Angel Face, his girlfriend who works as a stripper, but backs out every time. One night everything closes in at once: she tells him she will not wait any longer, the lawyer Biddel offers him an illegal job that pays well, and other schemes are running out on the street. Johnny has to decide in the course of a single night. Two things about the film are strange. The first is the narrator: the voice speaking at the opening is Chicago itself, and the city introduces its own people. The second is a character called Gregg Warren, who works outside a nightclub doing a mechanical-man act, standing still for hours, and the audience is never quite sure whether he is a man or a machine. This Republic film noir, directed by John H. Auer, stands somewhere between realism and fantasy. Ninety minutes.