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"Crossfire" feels like an underdeveloped masterpiece -- it's well acted and beautifully filmed, but thinly written and way too short. As is, it's just a decent police procedural with hints of film noir (at its zenith in 1947) and social commentary (also trendy at the time) thrown in for good measure. It's remembered today as one of the first two Hollywood films to deal with anti-Semitism, and as being much better than the similarly-themed "Gentleman's Agreement" (no mean feat). But its real subject is the difficulty that WWII soldiers, as trained killers, were having as they made the transition to civilian life. (For a more genteel take on this topic, try "The Best Years Of Our Lives.") A man is beaten to death in the first few frames of the film. We do not see his attacker. The movie is about the investigation of this murder, which is actually pretty straightforward, but it takes some unnecessary detours, like when the main suspect, a depressed soldier, winds up in the apartment of Gloria Grahame, a dance-hall hooker with a really weird pimp played by Paul Kelly. There's also a civics lecture halfway through the movie that slows the proceedings to a crawl, and the ending is tidy enough for a cop show. But otherwise it's a pretty decent mystery. Still, what a great noir it could have been. Director Edward Dmytryk drops a few hints at the subject of the original novel -- homosexuality, not anti-Semitism -- like when sadistic creep Monty seethes at the image of his friend Mitch talking with a strange man at a bar. And the cast is excellent. Robert Ryan makes for a very credible cretin, and even becomes a little sympathetic in his final scenes, not unlike Peter Lorre as the child murderer in "M." He deserved an Oscar but lost to Edmund Gwenn that year (you can't beat Santa Claus). Robert Mitchum is onhand as a soldier friend of the accused killer. Was Mitchum a great actor or a great star? Someone else can figure that out, but his sleepy eyes and bemused half-smile work very well here since they imply that his character knows something everyone else doesn't. (And he does.) And Robert Young, as the detective assigned to the murder, is surprisingly gritty, discarding his usual avuncular affability even when he has to deliver the civil-rights sermon midway through the picture. There's no question that Bogart or Tracy would have been brilliant in the role, but neither of them were at RKO in 1947 so you'll just have to deal with Dr. Welby. Still, Young is good enough to make you wish someone had cast him in a detective drama instead of "Father Knows Best," which he hated and which drove him to alcoholism and suicide attempts. The man deserved better than smarm and Sanka.

Definitely a "must see" for all fans of film noir.

Thanks to a fine script and crisp, razor sharp direction, a top cast comes together and works like a well oiled clock to produce a crackerjack psychological thriller. Wonderful characterizations articulate the movie's powerful message about the dangers of racial and religious intolerance.

It's difficult and almost unjust to single out any one, particular performance because there isn't a weak link in the entire company. But Robert Ryan as the hateful and violent white supremacist is truly spine chilling.

Making this film in the 1940s would have taken a lot of courage. Now,all these years later, at a time when contemporary movies are dominated by a ridiculous over abundance of foul language, bare breasts, crummy acting and deafening soundtracks, it's refreshing to get back to the basics of quality film making with a viewing treat like "Crossfire".

Another low budget gem from the Hollywood archives .

'Crossfire' is a very interesting movie. It begins like a murder mystery, but it becomes obvious very quickly who the murderer is, and the plot becomes more concerned with his motive. And it is his motive which makes the movie so interesting. 'Crossfire' is a "message" movie but it is also a cracking good drama, and that's what I enjoyed about it. Plus the cast is dynamite - Roberts Preston, Mitchum and Ryan, and the beautiful Gloria Grahame ('In A Lonely Place'). Mitchum doesn't have a big a role as you might expect (the movie was released the same year as 'Out Of The Past' in which he gives a much more substantial performance), but he's always great to watch, and Robert Ryan ('The Wild Bunch') steals the movie as a very nasty piece of work. I find many 1940s romance and comedy movies to be too corny for my taste, but the crime movies are much more to my liking. They are usually grittier and more realistic, and 'Crossfire' is a great example of this. Highly recommended.

Edward Dmytryk directed this shadowy movie about a murder investigation involving demobilized military personnel. Robert Young gets to lecture us about hatred, Robert Mitchum walks through most of this picture, and Gloria Grahame revisits the feistiness she exhibited in "It's A Wonderful Life." It's Robert Ryan who gets at the heart of the matter: anti-semiticism. He goes so deep into his role as Monty Montgomery (Imagine parents named Lawrence calling their son Larry!), that the drama sits squarely on his shoulders, and he is more than up to the challenge. Without him, the movie would be commonplace. Ryan has played a number of memorable villains in his day ("Bad Day at Black Rock;" "Billy Budd"), but this performance put him on the map. With Sam Levene as the murder victim.

In the Post WWII, Police Captain Finlay (Robert Young) investigates the murder of the Jewish Joseph "Sammy" Samuels (Sam Levene) in his apartment after a beating with his team. Out of the blue, soldier Montgomery "Monty" (Robert Ryan) comes to the apartment and tells that three soldiers - Corporal Arthur "Mitch" Mitchell (George Cooper), soldier Floyd Bowers (Steve Brodie) and himself - had been in the apartment drinking with Sammy, and Mitch would have been the last one to leave the place. Finlay finds Mitch's wallet on the couch and he becomes the prime suspect.

Finlay visits Sergeant Peter Keeley (Robert Mitchum) and he tells that his friend Mitch is a sensitive artist incapable to kill a man. Keeley decides to investigate the case to protect and clear the name of his friend. When Keeley discuss the evidences with Finlay, the captain concludes that Mitch did not have the motive to kill Sammy, who was a stranger that he met in a bar. Now Captain Finlay has another suspect and he decides to plot a scheme to expose the assassin.

"Crossfire" is a great film-noir, with top-notch director (Edward Dmytryk) and cast with three Roberts - Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan and Robert Young; excellent story of murder and prejudice; magnificent screenplay that uses flashbacks to disclose and solve the mystery; and very impressive quotes. The theme - hatred against Jews - is unusual and this is the first time that I see a film-noir with this type of sordid story (and without the femme fatale). My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Rancor" ("Rancor")

Note: On 23 May 2023, I saw this film again.

As a rule, there are few things more dispiriting than Hollywood's attempts to be courageous. Mixing caution with heavy-handedness, "message movies" pat themselves loudly on the back for daring to tackle major problems. CROSSFIRE is not entirely free from this taint; it includes a sermon on the nature of senseless hatred that is embarrassingly obvious, assuming a level of naivity in its audience that's depressing to contemplate. As late as 1947, it was a big deal for a movie to announce that anti-Semitism existed, and that it was bad. (It was unthinkable, of course, for Hollywood to address the real subject of the book on which the movie was based—its victim was a homosexual.) Nevertheless, thanks to good writing and excellent acting, CROSSFIRE remains a persuasive examination of what we would now call a hate crime.

Postwar malaise was one of the major components of film noir, and CROSSFIRE addresses it directly. The film is set in Washington, D.C. among soldiers still in uniform but idle, spending their days playing poker and bar-crawling. Joseph Samuels (Sam Levene), an intelligent and kindly Jew, explains that the end of the war has created a void: all the energy that went into hating and fighting the enemy is now unfocused and bottled up. Samuels meets three soldiers in a bar: the sensitive Mitchell, who is close to a nervous breakdown, the weak-willed Floyd Bowers, and Montgomery, a tall, overbearing bully who nastily belittles a young soldier from Tennessee as a stupid hillbilly. The three soldiers wind up at Samuels' apartment, where the drunken Monty becomes increasingly abusive, calling his host "Jew-boy." Samuels is beaten to death, and Mitchell disappears, making himself the prime suspect for the killing.

Unraveling the crime are Detective Finlay (Robert Young), dry and by-the-book, and Sergeant Keeley (Robert Mitchum), a thoughtful and experienced friend who knows Mitchell is incapable of murder. Among the pieces of the puzzle are Ginny (Gloria Grahame), a nightclub hostess who met Mitchell and gave him her apartment key, and Floyd (Steve Brodie), who as a witness to the crime holes up terrified in a seedy rooming house. While there is no real "whodunit" suspense, the story remains gripping, and the trap laid for the killer is extremely clever.

The strong noir atmosphere saves the movie from feeling didactic or sanctimonious. The cinematography is a striking shadow-play, with inky darks and harsh lights, rooms often lit by a single lamp filtered by cigarette smoke. World-weariness is as pervasive as noir lighting. "Nothing interests me," Finlay says quietly; "To nothing," is Ginny's toast in the nightclub. Gloria Grahame, the paragon of noir femininity, nearly steals the movie with her two scenes. Platinum-blonde, jaded and caustic, she's the quintessential B-girl, poisoned by the "stinking gin mill" where she works ("for laughs," she says bitterly), her sweet face curdling when Mitchell tells her that she reminds him of his wife. Now and then a wistful kindness peeks through her defensive shell, as when she dances with Mitchell in a deserted courtyard, then offers to cook him spaghetti at her apartment. When he goes there, he meets a weasely, crumple-faced man (Paul Kelly) who seems to sponge off Ginny, and whose conversation is a dense layering of lies and false confessions. Gloria blows Mitchell's good-girl wife off the screen in a scene where she's asked to give Mitchell an alibi. Slim and frail in her bathrobe, with her girlish lisp, she lets us see just how often Ginny has been insulted and dismissed as a tramp.

Robert Young is a nondescript actor, and he stands no chance against Mitchum's charisma, but he does a good job of keeping his pipe-smoking character, saddled with delivering the movie's earnest message, this side of pompousness. Mitchum, meanwhile, gets some cool dialogue, but not nearly enough to do; still, even when he's doing nothing but lounging in a corner you can't take your eyes off him. The third Robert, Ryan, creates a fully shaded and frighteningly convincing portrait of an ignorant, unstable bigot; we see his phony geniality, his bullying, his resentment of anyone with advantages, his "Am I right or am I right?" smugness; how easily he slaps labels on people and what satisfaction he gets from despising them.

CROSSFIRE's message seems cautious and dated now, though not nearly so much as the same year's A GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT. Finlay's speech about bigotry cops out by reaching back a hundred years for an instance of white victimhood, reminding us that Irish Catholics were once persecuted; next it could be people from Tennessee, he says, or men who wear striped neckties. Or maybe blacks, or Japanese, or homosexuals, or communists? The script seems afraid to mention any real contemporary problems. It sweetens its message by making the Jewish victim saintly, as though his innocence were not sufficient; and it takes care to exonerate the military, having a superior officer declare that the army is ashamed of men like Montgomery, and stressing that Samuels served honorably in the war. Still, it did take some guts to depict, immediately after World War II, an American who might have been happier in the Nazi army, and the movie's basic premise is still valid. If Monty were alive today, he would have gone out on September 12, 2001, and beat up a Sikh.

Brilliant thriller, deserving far more fame, Mitchum and Ryan are awesome in their starring roles, as is the entire supporting cast. A truly gripping film noir featuring some wonderfully images and some great dialogue, at the heart of it all is a strong message of tolerance and understanding. Based on a novel concerning homophobia, this movie attacks post-war anti-emitism, and all intolerance and hatred, with considerable power. Though parts may seem a little preachy to modern audiences, it still has the power to shock, and works very well as a thriller in its own right. A credit to all involved.

A man is murdered, apparently by one of a group of soldiers just out of the army. But which one? And why? "Crossfire" received five Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Supporting Actor and Gloria Grahame for Best Supporting Actress. It was the first B movie to receive a best picture nomination. This is remarkable on two counts: one, that a B movie got nominated, but also that it was deemed worthy. While not a bad film, it certainly has many qualities we think of with "B" pictures.

The really unfortunate thing is the use of anti-Semitism rather than homosexuality as in the original novel. The idea of someone hating Jews (at least to the point of murder) seems dated, whereas a homosexuality film would have been revolutionary and still impressive today (especially if the Irish Catholic speech stayed in).

.a little more action please" sang Elvis Presley. Obviously, no-one had listened to this song before making this film. If only they had, we might have had a little more action. It's a very talky affair and whilst the message is strong, the overall experience is laborious. The film is way too dark – can we have some light, please? – which gives it a film-noir feel and fits with the dark subject matter. But, how about some light once in a while? We also get all the dialogue delivered by every character in a gloomy low-key manner. It reminded me of Eastenders. Who knows, the cast may well have been using this film as an audition piece for that crass soap opera?

The actors are all good but the tone of the film never changes and this makes it a ploddingly dull affair and scenes drag on. Soldier Robert Ryan (Montgomery) is a great bigot, he is a scary bully and is the standout in the cast. The film almost gets interesting at the end but at the final denouement slips back into more talking and then things end very conveniently and quickly. It's a film that is way over-rated by people who think a film is good if the message is sound. They forget that the primary purpose of a film is to be entertaining. Hail the wisdom of Elvis.

SPOILERS Not only does this movie boasts three Roberts,but it also possesses all that makes a film noir great:a murky sticky atmosphere, a fine supporting cast , a lot of characters we remember even if they appear on the screen barely fifteen minutes(Gloria Grahame and her husband for instance).The first scene sets the tone:a murder ;we can only see the shadows on the wall.

Edward Dmytryk,whose career would dismally end (the likes of "Shalako") ,was here at the height of his powers:he films his story with a stunning virtuosity and there are unforgettable moments:the scene in the Jew's apartment seen thru the eyes of the drunken soldier;the way the director films brilliant Robert Ryan ,using dizzying high and low angle shots.He's arguably the stand-out and his performance is really spooky;the conversation during which you can only see Ryan's face in a mirror;all these stairs which seem to be death traps.

It seems that these soldiers can only survive in the dark:in the nightclubs,in Grahame's seedy apartment,in a movie theater.They are just about at breaking point,as if they had come from hell to wind up in another one.But one should notice that ,at least in the first half of the movie,their camaraderie,their solidarity remain intact:brothers in arms indeed;the police are the enemy.

Robert Young's cop is a thousand miles above your usual detective routine:the scenarists achieves the feat of including his own story (actually his grandfather)in this murder mystery.He really pleads for the right to difference:today the Jews,tomorrow the hillbillies from Tennessee ,then the guys with striped ties...His words have a contemporary feel:it's because they don't know the Jews,the fags (check the novel)that some people use them as scapegoats.

Robert Ryan's portrayal is one of the most frightening of all the film noir genre.It's interesting to compare his part with the one he plays in Robert Wise's "odds against tomorrow"(1959).In both movies ,his character is a racist or anti-Semite;in both movies no explanation.Ryan was known for his very liberal ideas,what a clever actor he was!

A contemporary audience may consider this film preachy, but I was so impressed that in 1945 a film would deal explicitly with anti Semitism and hate crimes in general. Robert young says hate can spread even to people from Tennessee. Unfortunately hate has spread to Asians, Latino, Muslims and those advocating Covid vaccination and mask wearing, WWII vets had a lot of issues to deal with, as do people today, but our culture has not done any better with dealing with them, so this film remains painfully timely.

Crossfire (1947)

Great Message, Great Symbolism, Very Good Movie

It's hard to go totally wrong with Robert Mitchum, Robert Young, and Robert Ryan all together as the three male leads, and with director Edward Dmytryk pulling together a complicated murder and detective yarn. That's reason enough to watch it once and even twice.

You might need a second look to fully catch the plot as it is explained (too much) or shown in flashback (also too much) because it's a little complicated without good reason. But it makes sense overall, and we see early on (too early probably) who the culprit is, and even why.

Besides the drama, well done in typical noir lighting and filled with those short quips that make post-war films dramatic, there is the social message, the anti-anti-Semitic point of it all. It only borders on preachy once or twice, and it's such an obviously good point to make we watch it being made approvingly and wait for the plot and the dramatic acting to take front row. Which they do, especially Young, who is a brilliantly laconic and patient detective, and Ryan, who is mean in a believably crude and angry way (Ryan is good at that, his typecasting reasonable). Mitchum mostly plays a watered down version of what he is famous for, and the fourth known acting force, Gloria Grahame, is a great, brief, presence even if slightly dispensable.

Though the movie is dominated by the sequence of events and by the message, both of which grow in force as we go, it is really easy to watch just for the lighting, camera-work, and acting, including the classic fight scene that opens the first few seconds of the film, all done with shadows.

The archetypes of soldiers presented is very deliberate, and this might be something people at the time were very familiar with and could relate to as much as the anti-Semitism thread. The shell-shocked soldier rendered helpless (but still intrinsically capable), the modest youngster without confidence (but capable, too), and the weary but outwardly able veteran are all there. And of course, the angry, violent soldier who is a product of the war, too. This last is also a responsibility of society--even the army goes all out to make good on the injustices here, not just because they are criminal, but because they stem from the wear and tear of a long awful war.

The audience then, more than now, could really get, but it's there to appreciate still.

Very few films have been provided an all star cast to work with such as Crossfire and the film was deserving of the "gotchya ending" superb twist for the crime solvers. A murder takes place in the opening scene and through a sequence of conversations that take place we are walked through flashbacks to find out who the murderer is but will the slick Detective Finlay (Robert Young) figure out who is the murderer. Two of the demobilized military personnel who enjoy playing poker as a past time are Keeley (Robert Mitchum) and Montgomery (Robert Ryan) who get right into the middle of the police murder investigation. It is no coincidence that three of the key performers in Crossfire are actors named Robert and each is a film star in their own right and bring their A game to the films story line.

Add the stellar acting of the two female stars in Gloria Grahame who plays dance hall girl Ginny, and the beautiful Jaqueline White who plays a more obscure role as Mary the sympathetic wife of the number one murder suspect Mitchell (George Cooper) we have the makings of a superb murder mystery film produced in 1947, some 75 years earlier.

The murderer is a racist and homophobic brute (although in 1947 the film treaded lightly on the homosexual undertone of the film) responsible for his own downfall by the clever Detective Finlay and without giving away any spoilers the ending is worth the long anticipated wait. I give Crossfire an overall exceptional 8 out of 10 IMDB rating.

CROSSFIRE is an interesting little mystery-cum-film noir production that reminded me a little of a proto RASHOMON. A man is murdered by his peers and a detective and his allies must figure out who's the killer and what exactly happened during the events leading up to the killing. They undercover a hotbed of racial hatred as the motives become clear...

Edward Dmytryk's movie is well shot, well lit, and tells an interesting, unusual storyline that's a far cry from the typical film noir production involving gumshoes, femme fatales, and criminal bosses. At the same time, he employs the talent of a number of actors familiar from those films: Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, and Gloria Grahame can all be relied upon to give effective performances and they help to make this film an intriguing and timely viewing experience.

An excellent piece of filming. Great acting. Moody. Excellent cinematography. Great script. You can see a lot of directors learned their craft from watching films like these. Worth watching.

I referenced CROSSFIRE at the IMDb before watching it on television a couple of days ago and what I found very interesting is that the original source novel featured the murder victim being a homosexual and not a Jew . This is very interesting not to mention helpful because it makes the story much easier to understand if you look upon murder victim Joseph Samuels as being homosexual rather than Jewish . For example if anti- semitism is prevalent would Joseph Samuels with his obviously Jewish sounding name invite strangers back to his flat ? But I guess RKO or any other Hollywood studio would be closed down and its studio heads thrown in prison if they'd have even thought of making a movie dealing with a homophobic murder and the movie has developed the anti-semitism angle with lines of dialogue like " Some of them are named Samuels and some of them have funnier sounding names " . Unfortunately am I seeing some anti British rhetoric here because of the mandate in Palestine by having the villain called Montgomery ? Am I reading between the lines too much ?

Regardless of this we can all agree that this is a very well acted piece of film noir with fine performances from Robert Young as Captain Finlay , George Cooper as Cpl Arthur Mitchell and a disconcertingly young Robert Mitchum as the idealistic Peter Keeley , but they're all over shadowed by Robert Ryan as Montgomery a role for which Ryan was Oscar nominated and it's this performance you'll remember the movie for long after the credits have rolled .

This is an expertly made, moodily photographed and naturally acted piece of of entertainment. On the screen the action is minimal but in your brain, it's explosive.

So many themes are dealt with such as racism, bullying, coercive manipulation but what it explores best is the trauma which millions of people were experiencing when this was made - how to cope with the shock of not being at war anymore. For five or three years, for millions of people, their one sole purpose of their lives, their reason for existence was to win the war and to kill the enemy. Every day of their lives was motivated by hatred of the enemy, that defined who they were then one day everyone is expected to become a completely different person. This picture deals with how this adjustment is so difficult. Being a crime thriller it does this I think better than BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES which was a little too sentimental for me.

From start to finish it's thoroughly engaging but one scene is particularly memorable. The only other film I can think of which gives you that terrifying sense of being so intoxicated that you don't know what's happening to you and don't care what's happening to you is TRAIN SPOTTING. Suffering from combat withdrawal, the character, Mitch drowns himself in booze, meets a working girl in a bar then has no idea what he's doing or where he ends up. His sense of reason has deserted him, like a good soldier, he just drifts along and does what he's told. This scene is exceptionally well made - you yourself experience his dissociation from reality.

The trouble for Mitch is that he's a prime suspect for a murder. This is the perfect start to a perfect film noir.

The most impressive fact is that the film is based on a novel written by film director Richard Brooks, a novel I never got to read. Brooks' films and screenplays are impressive (Lord Jim, a notable adaptation of Joseph Conrad's novel, A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Key Largo, etc.) Brooks loved to deal with the inner motives and contradictions in life. The performances of Robert Mitchum and Robert Young stand out.

Three Roberts for the price of one admission ticket: Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, and Robert Ryan. What a promotional poster! While this one is a classic because it gave the third Ryan his only Oscar nomination, it feels a little dated by today's standards. However, if you loved Gentlemen's Agreement, the film that won Best Picture of 1947, you'll probably love watching Crossfire.

The opening scene of Crossfire shows a man being murdered. He's struggling with his attacker and they crash into a lamp; the scene goes dark and the audience doesn't get to see what happens next. The little sliver of light in the other room shows one man dead and the other man's bottom half walking out of the apartment. The rest of the movie follows Detective Robert Young trying to figure out the murder, with flashbacks from Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, George Cooper, and Gloria Grahame.

If you're not familiar with these actors, you might be held in suspense a little longer than I was. I'm extremely familiar with them, and at the risk of sounding indecent, I immediately recognized the bottom half of the murderer in the opening scene.

Although Robert Mitchum got second billing, he wasn't really given anything to do, and although Robert Ryan got an Oscar nod, he doesn't really do anything different than he does in all his other typical movies. Robert Young comes across as an idiot until the very end, when he comes up with a goosebump-raising plan that almost makes the rest of the plot worthwhile. I really liked the twist at the end, but the rest of the movie was a bit boring, since it's no longer 1947.

DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not be your friend. When George Cooper says, "Things went a little blurry," the flashback is smudged and it will make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"