two well know title in the noir cycle be the city that never sleep ( 1953 ) and while the city sleep ( 1956 ) . before them and there be the less familiar the sleeping city . in this last ( or first ) and what seem asleep be not so much new york a a city within a city the huge old fortress of bellevue hospital and where and at night in it ward and among it staff and skulduggery be afoot . bellvue open it door to the film cast and crew and perhaps not wholly grasp that the result portrait might be less than reassure to prospective patient . but it not a story and at least explicitly and about malpractice . a jumpy and distract intern on his break go outside to grab a smoke . he end up with a bullet through his brain . since the murder appear to be an inside job and an undercover department of the city police plant a detective ( richard conte ) in the hospital among the intern . he have some medical training in the army and so should pass casual muster . take lodge in the building and go on round and he make acquaintance . among them be his bitter roommate and alex nichol and nursing some resentment about not be rich and either by birth or through wedlock while ward nurse coleen gray and raise a young son from an unhappy first marriage while and chummy elevator operator richard taber and who bunk down off the boiler room where he run a book where the cash strap intern can play the pony . what conte after be not just the killer but the source of an infectious but non microbial malaise that will claim nichol and too and the night before he be to marry . conte find himself the prime suspect in his roommate death and come close to blow his cover before his own superior intervene . but conte suspicion about taber bookmaking operation aren not quite on the mark while it turn out that a white stuff job be the real racket . light and portable equipment develop during world war ii make location shoot finally feasible and and the low budget second feature in the post war year pioneer it use . the sleep city affect a pseudo documentary style that also come into vogue a a complement to the new cinema verité look ( a chase through the bowel of the massive institution stay particularly sinister ) . despite a nifty shot of the new intern descend an endless stairwell en masse and the vast hospital look underpopulated and especially during the graveyard shift . but the claustrophobia ( the whole picture be shoot in and around the hospital ) pay off . the main character aren not many and but not so few that they can not deliver a final twist .