gomike824 This movie was already moving too slow for me when it came to the scene with the cops interrogating their main suspect: the old man janitor. They state in their questioning that the drug store delivery guy came to the first victim's apartment at 8:00. Yet they, and the newsmen, focus solely on the old janitor while seemingly paying no attention to the drug store deliverer.I have a very high regard for Fritz Lang's work, the film noir genre and this movie's cast. I just couldn't get past this wtf police work. Also, as a previous reviewer noted, Dana Andrews plays an annoyingly unconvincing drunk.

SnoopyStyle A serial killer is on the loose leaving the words "Ask Mother" at a crime scene. Sickly media mogul Amos Kyne is taken with the story calling the killer "The Lipstick Killer". Amos dies leaving the company in the hands of his feckless son Walter Kyne (Vincent Price) who assigns the story to the various heads of the media conglomerate. He creates a new title Executive Director to run the whole corporation for him pitting his news teams against each other for the scoop. Mark Loving runs the Kyne news wire service and recruits gossip columnist Mildred Donner (Ida Lupino). On the other team, Jon Day Griffith runs the newspaper New York Sentinel. Edward Mobley (Dana Andrews) is the star TV reporter dating Loving's secretary Nancy Liggett. Mobley insults the killer on the air while announcing his engagement to Nancy to lure the killer out.For me, there is simply too much going on. The movie starts with a serial killer and I assumed this is a crime drama. Then the newspaper politics and intrigue begin. It's sometimes fun. It's sometimes chaotic. The portrayal of the killer as he listened to Mobley is disappointing. He's not threatening. He's not scary. I would have been more interested in the inter-corporate rivalries if they're not talking about a serial killer. The seriousness of the murders don't match the chaotic fun of the news rivals.

st-shot Fritz Lang's While the City Sleeps shows the suspense master has lost a lot off of his fastball in this run of the mill drama involving a media power struggle and a serial killer. It's a long way from Berlin where the stairwells were a lot more intimidating.The Kyn media empire is thrown into chaos when it's founder and owner dies. The son (Vincent Price) is a clueless but also ruthless playboy and he pits department heads against each other to consolidate his own power. Meanwhile a serial killer with a mother complex is terrorizing the city and finding the killer may well be the path to upward mobility.There's little tension or suspense to be found in WTCS with its incredulous oversights that lapse into silly premise with the cast playing it broad both successfully (Price, Thomas Mitchell, George Sanders) and flat (Dana Andrews, Sally Forrest, Rhonda Fleming, ) while others ( John Drew Barrymore and Ida Lupino ) take it over the top. Lang's direction is dated and stilted, Ernest Lazlo's photography mood-less and washed out. The sets have a floodlit television studio look and without shadows to accent his compositions become lifeless and mundane, his characters less sinister and amoral. Lang does do a decent balancing act with the newsroom drama rotating his characters who back stab, form alliances, seduce and cheat without allowing things to become convoluted. But with his visual energy zapped and Barrymore a dime store Lorre the films urgency wanes. What does make Sleep interesting is the unintentional capsule view of the period with it's common acceptance of drinking on the job, heavy smoking, blind ambition for upward mobility ( this is still around in abundance ) and sexism though it should be added that at the film's conclusion the female leads hold most of the cards.

Michael Neumann Fritz Lang's personal favorite of all his films is, unfortunately, not his best, but he adds a cynical twist to the familiar story of a psychopath pursued by a headline-hungry press by showing more sympathy for the Freudian torments of the killer than for the scheming newsmen out to apprehend him. No one is completely innocent, least of all the supposedly white-hatted journalists, who would rather compete for personal kudos than bring a serial killer to justice: sharks in a feeding frenzy exhibit better ethics. Goodness prevails, in the guise of square-jawed hero Dana Andrews, but the film is sparked more by the presence of Vincent Price as the Machiavellian, milquetoast media tycoon who exploits 'the lipstick murders', and by Ida Lupino as a gossip column queen willing to sell her soul to the highest bidder. The actress couldn't have had much choice about her role: in film noir women were usually relegated to playing good girls or tough cookies, and the former position was already filled.