esrosedotblog

FEDS VS. NAZIS

Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film is a period piece and needs to be viewed from that perspective.

The House on 92d Street (1945)

shows the FBI hunt for spies who actually had the atomic bomb secrets ready to send to Germany.

It is a docu-drama mixing 'real agents' with actors on the real locations to show how this was done. Film noir is the vehicle.

The pro-FBI propaganda in the film is a bit off-putting but our view of the Bureau has changed. Cynicism was low and hero worship was high and this was the end of WWII when the Feds had busted over 16,000 active spies and espionage agents (the Fifth Column) and prevented the loss of any serious secrets. I doubt the latter; but that is what they say.

The narrative folds into the story and we are off and running. There is some suspense. The style of the film has been copied over and over. It is not bad.

It is hampered by the performance of the young double agent who is at the center of the action. He is pretty lame. Pretty but lame; that is.

Perhaps J. Edgar Hoover and his special friend Clyde Tolson (shown above) ran the casting couch. The boy does have the look of an ingenue. He even gets bitch slapped by the ugly nazi-dyke type; real slaps too. At the end he gets a mauling by everyone in that kind of way that 'lookers' can get messed up; pretty boy SM. It can be very hot. J. Ed and Clyde again, no doubt.

But there are a number of other actors who carry us along; Lloyd Nolan and Signe Hasso; Gene Lockhart and Leo G. Carroll who later became Topper. In a B- role is Harry Belaver who I used to really enjoy on television drama. He had the best squashed nose!

There are some really shocking parts along the way; gaspers. A guy gets thrown on a train track and then we see the locomotive blow its whistle and grind out of the station. Somehow, much more effective than seeing the whole decapitation as we would now; in living color. Love that noir.

I think that this is one of those films on the list because it was a breakthrough at the time. It did win an Oscar for Best Story. It is a pretty good yarn and true; or so they say.

I will give it a 3 out of Netflix5.