"Of his later films, Fritz Lang regards...While the City Sleeps as his personal favorite...Its highly complex plot is meticulously constructed. The complications are less a matter of its multiple events than of the intricacies of its character relationships, which are murky, dour, and unnerving...The action itself is methodically schematized, as the playboy who suddenly finds himself heir to (a newspaper) sets up a competition among his executives and reporters, dangling a plum position as reward for capturing a psychotic sex-murderer. As in M, Lang expresses pity for the plight of the killer who cannot help himself, who pleads with the police to 'catch me before I kill any more.'...This concern...is juxtaposed with the scrambling and unethical behavior of the newspaper people...Underlying the entire film is Lang's strong sense of the visual plan, involving a unique vision that can interpenetrate the paranoia of the schizophrenic outcast with the ambitious ruthlessness of established orders. The emotional consequence of this amalgam is a pervasive fatalism..." --Myron Meisel (©1975)