Open Secret

This is a creeping thriller of some very unpleasant character, as it gets worse all the time. The newly wed John Ireland visits a friend on his honeymoon, but as he reaches the friend's apartment, the friend is gone and lost, while his apartment is constantly being haunted by guys looking for something. It proves to be pictures, which are far too revealing for the taste of a criminal gang trying to develop into new nazis. The thriller is very well composed, it is logic and realistic all the way, the suspense keeps increasing as the plot thickens without mercy, and finally you'll even get the sensation of seeing John Ireland fighting with his hands pinioned - few actors have done that on the screen. John Ireland seldom got the opportunity to play the lead, he was usually cast as second hand gangsters, but here he actually shows off, and it might be his best picture. The terrific music adds to the atmospheric tension of the film.

The opening shot is an underlit traveling crane shot, followed by an upward-tilting Dutch angle of a series of backlit faces pronouncing "Guilty." It's an open secret this film was released in 1947, when every mystery was a film noir and every decent little guy faced a faceless conspiracy.

Charles Waldron Jr. tells his landlady that his old friend, John Ireland and his new bride, Jane Randolph, will be staying with him a few days. Then he hides a roll of film in his drawer and goes out. Eventually his houseguests notice he's gone and call in police sergeant Sheldon Leonard and gradually get entangled in a web of....

It's not the most subtly plotted of film noirs, and there's little mystery about what sort of nasty people are behind the evil doings, but it's certainly beautifully shot by horror-movie specialist George Robinson, and well performed by all hands. Director John Reinhardt was an Austrian actor who had switched to directing Spanish language movies for Fox in the early 1930s.

... in its exploration of anti-Semitism in a small town.

John Ireland and Jane Randolph play a pair of newlyweds who arrive in an unnamed town and are invited to stay at the apartment of an old service buddy of Ireland's. Only the buddy isn't there (they're told he'll be back by the landlady who lets them into his apartment). But as time passes the friend is a no show and there's a growing feeling that something sinister may have occurred, especially when the couple discover some white supremacist pamphlets hidden in a drawer.

In the early stages, the film hints at the prejudice in the town, with talk about "foreigners" and "staying with their own kind". Later, though, it becomes more blatant, with "a certain word" making no doubt about the object of the hatred. That bigotry insidiously trickles down to the neighborhood kids, too, slashing the tires of a car of a Jewish merchant (George Tyne in a quite effective performance), as well as preparing to throw rocks through his window.

The film has the visual elements of noir with its shadowy photography, appropriate for such a dark subject. The overall effect of the messaging in this film is, unfortunately, rather muted. The performances are adequate but restrained. However Roman Bohnen is appropriately loutish as a drunken bigot who strikes his wife (Ellen Lowe) across the face in a tavern.

And here this little "B" briefly, and tellingly, raises another ugly subject rarely broached in '40s dramas, spousal abuse. That is never more poignantly apparent than in the dialogue Lowe later delivers to Ireland in one powerful scene:

"Tell you what? How for the last five years he hasn't drawn a sober breath? How he beats me to prove that he's better than I am? He's a man. How he throws out the few flowers I pick, says they stink up the house. How he can't keep a job? Always blames it on (others)... never on to himself. How he's broken me. Torn me to pieces. Is that what you want me to tell you?"

Dialogue like that still has a strong impact, in combination with the tired anguish of Ellen Lowe's face and delivery.

"Open Secret" certainly owes a debt to "Crossfire," which came out a year earlier, but it stands on its own low-budget merits as not only a solid entry into the small field of 1940s films that dealt openly with racial and religious prejudice, but a very respectable noir thriller. The sets are simple, and there is no location footage at all -- but the director made up for that lack by using a great cast of character actors to portray some very hard-bitten men, women, and children, and, more unusually, he used sound in a dramatic way that continually moves the story forward while keeping the viewer in a state of jangled nervousness. Oh, yeah, its a very cool movie about antisemitism, of course; that goes without saying. But if you want to see it in purely filmic terms and don't care about the "message," it is equally cool. Watch for the fine low-key lighting and strange angle shots -- one of the best set-ups is Sheldon Leonard lounging akilter on a couch in his entry scene with a hugely close-up lamp and telephone in the foreground -- but also LISTEN for the doors opening and closing, telephones ringing, people screaming, sirens, noisy children, mumbling landlady, things dropping, drawers slamming; the sound effects are almost a Hitchcokian element in their own right. And pay attention to the continually changing status of the apartment door -- locked, unlocked, oops she forgot the key, locked, oops she left it open! -- there is a rhythmic and frightening quality to the door's continually shifting security status that is heightened by the always jarring sounds of intrusive door knockings and unexpected telephone rings. Considering what these folks had to work with, i think they succeeded admirably.

In the late forties, theatre owners such as Harry Brandt made some feature films such as OPEN SECRET. The cast has some well known character actors, and the plot line is very interesting. However, two films with Humphrey Bogart had more dynamic punch to them that carries the same message through to today. BLACK LEGION is the premiere film in exposing the hate and venom of individuals who misunderstand the basics of the "American Way". ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT brings the message of Nazis and anti-semitism in the United States to a slightly less strong level. OPEN SECRET would be considered an attempt to emulate the work shown in the two above films. Viewed today, it looks like a low budget "B" movie.