Occasionally, films come along that create an entire genre with this origin. It Happened One Night from 1934 pretty much invented the "road picture," in which the plot revolves around the movement of two characters travelling, with the route itself being the primary scenery. Night of the Living Dead in 1968 heralded a long list of zombie movies. 1948's The Naked City essentially created the procedural cop drama, which later drifted into lazy tropes that this film vocally came out against. The film opens without visual credits. A narrator tells you that who wrote, photographed, directed and designed the film. It then takes the time to explain that the film wasn't filmed in a studio, but actually on the streets of New York, which in 1948 was unheard of.
The narrator then continues,
"Barry Fitzgerald, our star, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Don Taylor, Ted de Corsia and the other actors, played out their roles on the streets, in the apartment houses, in the skyscrapers of New York itself. And along with them, a great many thousand New Yorkers played out their roles also. This is the city as it is. Hot summer pavements, the children at play, the buildings in their naked stone, the people without makeup."
Digging into the film (won two oscars, nominated for another), I found a great many inaccurate tags applied. It is not a "semi-documentary" in any greater sense than any film happens to occur in a real place. It is not a tour through everyday New York; it is a film that uses New York just as hundreds of films do now, every year, only this was made at a time when that wasn't done, except for newsreels. Much of the film does appear to be "newreel" in style, but this is because that was the only means of production that would allow filming in the outdoors, under these conditions, in 1948. It wasn't a director's choice. There were no other choices. The voiceover does not "clarify" the story, nor does it explain the character's motivations. It asks the same sort of questions anyone might, makes wry observations, gives no explanation of the story beyond what is seen.
The Naked City only seems to have the characteristics named above because it's difficult to explain, to a modern film audience, why things were filmed this way, or why the narrator spoke thus, or how the city unfolded, because in terms of film suspension of disbelief, this film in particular stands out as alien to most anything else we might see. It doesn't "fit" a genre, because it invented one. Prior to this, movies were detectives and bad guys, or cops and robbers... police officers weren't depicted as people with private lives, they weren't shown making jokes with each other, "cases" were solved by clever intuition, not by cops doing their jobs — and on that point, police work wasn't shown as a routine, repetitive, working man's job, until this film was made. The story takes the position that cases are not solved by brilliance, but by a lot of people doing small, boring things methodically, repeatedly, over time. It shocked the hell out of audiences at the time, revolutionised the idea of film and did a great deal to smash Hollywood thinking in the 30s and 40s... and yet, now, except in film courses, where the film is horribly mis-labeled and abusively misunderstood, it's almost unknown.
This isn't because the film failed, but because it succeeded too well. The concepts were copied almost immediately, like a tidal force, that not only invented the 1950s idea of the television "cop show," it revamped other genres as well, as western shows like Have Gun will Travel and Gunsmoke likewise became 19th century versions of the same cop-show pacing, very successfully. Amidst the deluge, the original film disappeared.
Also, because the film did use a lot of unknown actors willing to film in New York, perhaps working in the theatre there, a bunch of neat cameos appear of people so near to the beginning of their careers that they're unknown. Arthur O'Connell, the colonel from Operation Mad Ball, appears here much younger, barely recognisable, as a simple cop early in the film. David Opatoshu, is recognisable from Star Trek's original series episode, A Taste of Armageddon. A very young John Randolph, who would later play Clark Griswold's father in Christmas Vacation, is a virtually unrecognisable police dispatcher. James Gregory, familiar as Inspector Luger from Barney Miller, is here, quite obviously as a cop. All of the aforegoing were born in New York City. Molly Picon, who played Yente the Matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof is here as a shopkeeper. Kathleen Freeman, the nun who goes at Jake and Elwood in The Blues Brothers is here, on a subway train. She was born in Chicago. Paul Ford is also here, best known as Mayor Shinn from The Music Man, but whom I also love in The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming. He was born in Baltimore. None of these are "cameos." They're all working actors at the beginning of their career, sprinkled like wedding rice throughout the picture.
Obviously, I don't want to talk about the story. Barry Fitzgerald has always been one of my favourite actors; he turns up in my favourite film, The Quiet Man. More's the pity, it's not available on youtube.
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