Cry of the City Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Cry of the City Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov February 20, 2019

Robert Siodmak's "Cry of the City" (1948) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber. The supplemental features on the disc include an exclusive audio commentary by film noir expert Eddie Muller and trailers for other releases from the label's catalog. In English, without optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".

The wanted man

Our initial impression is that Marty Rome (Richard Conte) really is a bad guy. The two cops that visit him in the prison ward reveal that he has a long record and that he was involved in a recent robbery. We also learn that he has gunned down one of their colleagues.

Later on, however, we also learn that Marty is trying to protect the identity of a mysterious girl (Debra Paget) who has become a target. In fact, Marty is even ready to risk his life so that she can get away. But why? What could possibly force a cold-blooded killer to suddenly want to be a good guy? And who is the girl that Marty wants to protect?

We learn more from Marty’s nemesis, Lieutenant Vitto Candella (Victor Mature), who wants to put him behind bars. Vitto and Marty come from the same neighborhood in Little Italy and were once good friends. But when Vitto joined the police their relationship became complicated and eventually they parted ways. Now Vitto wants Marty locked up, but he also insists that he is trying to prevent his younger brother, Tony (Tommy Cook), from going down the same dangerous path. Is he sincere? We don’t know. And neither does Tony, which is why he vows to foil Vitto’s plan.

A janitor helps Marty escape from the heavily guarded ward and he goes back to the city looking for the mysterious girl. Along the way he confronts a shady character (Berry Kroeger) who offers to pay him big money if he agrees to confess his role in the recent robbery so that his boss is freed. Then Marty meets his old friend Brenda (Shelley Winters), who reluctantly helps him get his wound treated by a paperless doctor.

As it becomes clearer that Marty is running out of time, we begin to wonder if our initial instinctive impression of him was true. Then we begin to wonder if there is a clear line that separates guys like Marty from guys like Vitto. At the end, we also begin to speculate that it may not actually matter much.

The truth is that it does matter, but as it often happens in real life the big picture here is a lot more complicated, with a lot more gray than black and white. It is why this film is so effective -- it repeatedly makes us see its characters from different angles, judge them differently and in the process realize that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are tricky terms that all of us are guilty of misplacing.

Director Robert Siodmak worked with a script from Richard Murphy, who adapted Henry Edward Helseth’s novel popular novel The Chair for Martin Rome. During the same period, Murphy also collaborated with Elia Kazan’s on the excellent noir films Boomerang (1947) and Panic in the Streets (1950).

*According to various reports, the legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht also contributed to the script, but his name does not appear in the official film credits.

Cry of the City Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Robert Siodmak's Cry of the City arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber.

The release is sourced from the 2K remaster of the film that Twentieth Century Fox prepared and initially the British Film Institute used to prepare this Region-B release. However, I cannot say that the film looks exactly as it does on the Region-B release.

I viewed the release earlier tonight and there are two issues that I would like to highlight in our review. First, it appears that the gamma levels are slightly elevated, so the ranges of blacks, whites, and grays are different. On my system I can do automatic adjustments to get the proper RGB levels I need, so this was easy to overcome. The second issue us that the encoding is not optimized well and as a result a quite a bit of the grain actually begins to look more like conventional video noise. However, the remaster already has some areas where density fluctuates and delineation isn't optimal, so grain fluctuations that are caused by the encode actually exacerbate the unevenness even more (you can see examples in screencatures #4 and 8). I think that on smaller screens the difference may not be too obvious, but on a larger screen it is actually rather easy to see. Overall image stability is very good. Lastly, a few tiny scratches remain, but there are no distracting large cuts, damage marks, or torn/warped frames to report in our review. My score is 3.75/5.00. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

Cry of the City Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Optional English SDH subtitles are not provided for the main feature.

The audio has been remastered, so clarity and stability are indeed very good. Also, the upper register, where the soundtracks of these these types of older films are typically most vulnerable, is free of distracting distortions. There are no audio drops, pops, or cracks.

Cry of the City Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary - film noir expert Eddie Muller offers a great deal of very interesting information about the period in which Cry of the City emerged, the film's style and key themes, the careers of various cast members, etc. If you are a fan of film noir, you almost certainly know who Mr. Muller is and what to expect from him, so this commentary basically delivers more of the same -- excellent historic analysis and illuminating observations.

• Trailers - a collection of trailers for other Kino Lorber catalog releases.

Cry of the City Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I think that for the best technical presentation of Cry of the City you will have to pick up the Region-B release that the British Film Institute produced in 2016, but you should definitely consider adding this release to your collection because it has yet another terrific audio commentary from film noir expert Eddie Muller. I think that Mr. Muller's knowledge of everything film noir is unsurpassed and all of the commentaries and interviews that he has recorded for different releases are always illuminating. RECOMMENDED.