La maison de la 92e rue

I'm glad one of my favorite movies The House on 92nd Street has been released on DVD and to read the reactions others have made about it. I first saw this movie when it was first released and I was about 11 years old. It made a great impression on me at the time. Of course it is much older now and so am I. My reaction to the revelation of the identity of Mr. Christopher came as an almost physical shock. I should add that at the time this movie came out the war had just ended and the bomb had been dropped only months before, and the radio made much of the nuclear race between Germany and the United States, so the 'now it can be told' aspect of the movie had a lot more meaning then. Also, we weren't very ambivalent about who the good guys and the bad guys were in the war (that didn't happen until Vietnam). I can see that the technology that seemed so cutting edge then is simplistic and dated by today's standards, but that doesn't hurt the movie if you take it in the context of its time. One comment I'd like to make: when Elsa first saw Dietrich's altered credentials she was rightly suspicious and sent for confirmation by courier from Hamburg. In the meantime he continued to operate for what seemed like months and the war started. How long did to get that confirmation anyway? By the way, I've seen the House and it was on 93rd street.

This semi documentary film, shows the FBI at work in those early days of the European conflict. Henry Hathaway, the director, focus on the work behind the scenes of a group of German spies, operating in New York and how the FBI is able to infiltrate the group.

The film, as seen today, still holds the viewer's attention, although the technology is obsolete by today standards. We are given a suspenseful story about the group that established the base of operations in the house on 92nd Street and Madison Avenue in the Manhattan of the 40s. The crisp black and white cinematography by Norbert Brodine still looks pristine and sharp.

The cast headed by Lloyd Nolan as Briggs, do a good job under Mr. Hathaway's direction. Best of all is Signe Hasso as Elsa Gebhart, the designing woman with a lot of secrets. Leo G. Carroll is also seen as one of the spies. Gene Lockhart also has a minor role.

It was fun to watch uncredited New York based actors in the background such as E.G. Marshall, Vincent Gardenia, Paul Ford, among others making small contributions to the film.

When this film was made in the 1940's, the ultimate evil that is Adolph Hilter and the Nazi movement was still a serious threat to our way of life. Lloyd Nolan, a major star of the 30's and 40's, gives his usual strong performance as FBI Agent Briggs, in charge of the Nazi spy case. Leo G. Carroll steals the movie playing the Nazi spymaster. Enjoy this film and remember why our fathers and grandfathers fought WWII. As a side note, real FBI agents appeared in this movie in support roles at the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, who gave his full co-operation to the producers.

It really IS a classic of the genre, but the problem is that the genre itself is so dated as not to be taken seriously anymore. That happens to genres. Would you watch a Western in which the good guy wears a white hat and the bad guy wears a black hat and one "calls the other out" and they have a mano-a-mano shootout in the middle of the dusty street and the good guy wins and gets the girl? I mean, that's asking a lot of a modern audience.

This film was one of a series of semi-documentaries that came out with the end of the war. Often, as here, Henry Hathaway was the director and the stentorian baritone Reed Hadley was the narrator. I can't vouch for the historical accuracy of the plot, although regardless of the facts I'm sure J. Edgar Hoover was tickled pink when he saw it. Hoover, President-for-Life of the FBI, was a media savvy character. Early in his career he had a skilled partner in Melvin Purvis, the guy who tracked down Dillinger. Such rivalry was not to be tolerated. Purvis's part in the affair, in fact his whole persona, was purged like Akhenaten's until Hoover became the hero. Purvis quit in disgust. Hoover refused to cooperate with Warner's "G-Men" because Jimmy Cagney patronized a saloon, but he gave the FBI's all to this film because the FBI was morally upright and flawless.

One scene was of particular interest. A real Nazi spy insists on testing the American counterspy's radio set to see if it can actually reach Hamburg. It doesn't. It transmits directly to a nearby FBI station which then relays the information to Germany, in a slightly altered form. The FBI operator hears the Nazi calling. He looks up and says, "That isn't Bill. I know his fist." A "fist" is the particular style that an individual operator uses in sending Morse code. It's about as distinctive as his handwriting. I was a radio operator for a few years in the Coast Guard and had a great fist. Most of the other men at my station set their keys to automatic "fast" so they could sound hot. Only they overreached and wound up sounding jagged and making a lot of errors. I set mine to "slow" and developed a fist that was easy to read and pleasing to listen to in its rhythmic splendor. Two radiomen from a ship visited the station in dress blues one afternoon and asked who "LL" was -- my sign-off letters. They came over to my console and one said, "We just wanted to tell you that it's a pleasure to copy you." The two men shook my hand, the three of us blushed, and they made a hurried exit, because real men don't say things like that to one another.

I dislike boasts but there are so few things I do well. Oh, yes, the movie. Alas,the conventions of the genre demand that the Nazis be evil in every respect. Worse than that, they're rude. When the American counterspy is introduced to them, they don't even greet him, they just scowl. None of them is in love, none of them has a home, none has a dog or a cat or collects stamps. They sacrifice one another for the cause at the drop of a solecism and -- well, you get the picture. Compare the Nazi spies in Hitchcock's "Notorious."

The conventions doom the characters as human beings. Loyd Nolan and Signe Hasso are the most watchable, but all of the performances are colorless. Even the hero is dull, despite the danger he often finds himself in.

It's still an interesting and exciting flick, once you adapt to its weaknesses. Fascinating to see the way in which two-way mirrors are presented as the high-tech novelty they were at the time. And the pre-computer FBI's fingerprint storage -- "Five THOUSAND fingerprints on file!", Hadley announces proudly.

It's worth catching if it is convenient.

This is the story of how the FBI supposedly cracked a Nazi espionage ring on the trail of Manhattan Project (the A-Bomb) in the early years of World War II. As a movie, its chief significance is that it kicked off a spate of semi-documentary movies paying tribute to one or another of the U.S. government's law enforcement agencies and celebrating Our Tax Dollars at Work. Such films became a staple of the noir cycle; a few of them even achieved distinction (T-Men, for instance).

William Eythe, a young American, is recruited by and trained in Germany to be a spy; in fact he works as a double agent for the FBI. The film, shot largely on location, traces the actions of the nest of vipers on New York's upper east side. Their unofficial master seems to be Signe Hasso, under cover of running a chic dress boutique. Her opposite number, who runs Eythe, is Lloyd Nolan (who was to reprise his role as Inspector Briggs in subsequent films).

The film's period flavor keeps it from seeming too dated, because the spying looks quite primitive to audiences spoiled by James Bond gimmickry and later, even more sophisticated, espionage thrillers. And, from a modern perspective, the smug boastfulness about the Bureau's -- and America's -- infallibility becomes a bit hard to swallow. There's little texture or nuance in the film, but, as a quasi-historical document, it exerts its own fascination.