Clevercell Very disappointing...

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

RE D Very interesting plot, not just the same old, same old. It is unfortunate that this film is not more readily available. The story line is different from any other film I have seen. The story is developed and unpredictable. The cast and acting throughout leave nothing to be desired. Acting and camera use is wonderful and the characters are well developed. I would not consider this a boring film by any stretch of the imagination. The Sleeping City is a great example of a classic film noir. I would not have been able to view this film if it wasn't for a store I found online that sells a DVD copy of it, if you look around you should be able to find it. Hope more people can enjoy this great work too!

bmacv Two well-known titles in the noir cycle are The City That Never Sleeps (1953) and While The City Sleeps (1956). Before them, there was the less familiar The Sleeping City. In this last (or first), what seems asleep is not so much New York as a city-within-a-city – the huge old fortress of Bellevue Hospital, where, at night in its wards and among its staff, skulduggery is afoot. Bellvue opened its doors to the film's cast and crew, perhaps not wholly grasping that the resulting portrait might be less than reassuring to prospective patients. But it's not a story, at least explicitly, about malpractice. A jumpy, distracted intern on his break goes outside to grab a smoke. He ends up with a bullet through his brain. Since the murder appears to be an inside job, an undercover department of the city police plants a detective (Richard Conte) in the hospital among the interns. He's had some medical training in the army and so should pass casual muster. Taking lodging in the building and going on rounds, he makes acquaintances. Among them are his bitter roommate, Alex Nichol, nursing some resentments about not being rich, either by birth or through wedlock; ward nurse Coleen Gray, raising a young son from an unhappy first marriage; and chummy elevator operator Richard Taber, who bunks down off the boiler room – where he runs a book where the cash-strapped interns can play the ponies. What Conte's after is not just the killer but the source of an infectious but non-microbial malaise that will claim Nichol, too, the night before he was to marry. Conte finds himself the prime suspect in his roommate's death and comes close to blowing his cover before his own superiors intervene. But Conte's suspicions about Taber's bookmaking operation aren't quite on the mark; it turns out that a 'white-stuff job' is the real racket....Light and portable equipment developed during World War II made location shooting finally feasible, and the low-budget second-features in the post-war years pioneered its use. The Sleeping City affects a pseudo-documentary style that also came into vogue as a complement to the new cinema-verité look (a chase through the bowels of the massive institution stays particularly sinister). Despite a nifty shot of the new interns descending an endless stairwell en masse, the vast hospital looks underpopulated, especially during the graveyard shift. But the claustrophobia (the whole picture is shot in and around the hospital) pays off. The main characters aren't many, but not so few that they can't deliver a final twist.

jsmarr4 I saw this movie once, many years ago, in NYC. It was filmed on location at Bellevue Hospital, eighty blocks south from where I did my residency training in medicine (50's-60's.) The medical attire, locations, and medical palaver are certainly dated, but that was the way it was ... many years ago. The movie's characters (Conte et al.) were grand; an atherosclerotic, aging, Bellevue Hospital was really like that, the state-of-the-art treatments, the accomodations for patients were all shockingly interesting. In this sense, it is living history of a past medical era.The Noir is also so nicely done: hospital corridors, primitive art deco elevators, and night shots of Gotham streets. (All these retro-images are based on a film once seen by me forty years ago!)If film renovators/DVD entreprenuers were to read this clip, I would recommend they consider this movie as one that many forgotten Noirs that need to be resurrected. It would be a cryptogenic discovery. Conte was a great actor, and he has a loyal following. (This movie was in his early career, and he plays a good guy!) He would be lauded later for his Godfather roles.)

garynoir A bleak, atmospheric movie, filmed entirely on location at New York's Bellevue Hospital. Fine performances by Conte, Gray, Alexander and a slew of New York stage actors. Note the brief but significant appearance, at the beginning of the movie, by Hugh Reilly, who went on to star in the Lassie TV series.