Odio implacabile

"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.

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.

CROSSFIRE is an unusual film in that it is considered both a standard of the Noir genre, while also attaining mainstream success both critically and commercially, having been nominated for Five Oscars including Best Picture, Screenplay (John Paxton) and Director (Edward Dmytryk). Supporting performers Robert Ryan and Gloria Grahame were also nominated. The Academy Awards attention is more attributed to it's social consciousness than for its crime elements. Indeed, the Best Picture that very same year was the similarly themed GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT. The concept of a military murder has been the premise of a couple of later notable Academy Awards nominated pictures - Norman Jewison' A SOLDIER'S STORY and Rob Reiner's A FEW GOOD MEN. Make no mistake about it, topical subject matter or not, CROSSFIRE is a fine Noir - particularly the first hour or so which takes place over one long night. The set-up is simple enough as four friends, including Montgomery (Ryan) from military backgrounds go to a bar where they meet two strangers including Sam Levene (Joseph Samuels). As the bar scene winds down, a group of them split off and end up in a hotel apartment. One ends up dead. The police join the scene of the crime in the form of smooth detective Finlay (Robert Young). Questions are asked and not always directly answered. During the night, one of the soldiers Mitchell (George Cooper) wanders off and ends up in the arms of pay-per-dance bar girl Ginny (Grahame). Robert Mitchum plays Keeley, the roommate of the missing soldier, who also gets questioned. The long night sequence is Noir at its finest. Dark, smoky and full of a heavy atmosphere where the longueurs of the evening weigh heavily upon all the characters. Grahame's has a sort of admirer/stalker (Paul Kelly). He's not even given a name, just called "The Man" in the credits. But, Graham (in a star-making performance) and The Man are the kinds of peripheral characters that make great Noir so indelible. Bitter, despondent people with little to look forward to, let alone live for. When day breaks, a couple of problems arise with the film. The first is the long-held belief that the anti-Jewish motive for the killing is 'preachy'. One does have to keep in mind that prejudice was a touchy subject at the time. The novel (by acclaimed filmmaker Richard Brooks) the screenplay is based on actually had homosexuality as the motive - but, that was even more verboten a subject for the era. One can defend the prejudice angle while also wishing that it were presented more cinematically. As fine a performance as Young delivers, it does come off as speechifying. If screenwriter Paxton and Dmytryk had found a way to have woven that subplot into the the investigation scenes it would have flowed more organically and excitingly rather than just watching folks sitting in an office (plus, you have a fine actor like Mitchum basically just looking on and nodding - have him interact somehow). The even larger qualm is that the mystery to be solved isn't that thrilling. Brooks, Dmytryk et al. weren't trying to make the most intricate of murder plots, but, here, it's so obvious who did it that the last act of the movie drags a bit. Although, it must be noted that the final scene is quite well handled. Still, one can't help but feel that the spell cast by first hour of the film is broken by the daybreak (it would require a bit of a re-write, but, I'd love to see a version where the entire story takes place in that one night).

Flaws aside, CROSSFIRE is still a fine film. There is a reason it has become a touchstone of the Noir genre as well as a Best Picture nominee that has endured for over 70 years - something which can't be said about a lot of fellow nominees over the decades.

'Film Noir' is a much-used (and misused), catch phrase, coined to describe

Hollywood films of the forties and fifties. These films were invariable in black and white (hence the paucity of such films on Australian commercial TV), and shot on tiny budgets in a matter of a few weeks. The plots are generally formulaic. Someone is murdered, someone else will be framed for that murder, and a

'dame' figures somewhere in the proceedings. "Crossfire" is low budget, and shot in black & white: admirably so by J. Roy Hunt. And yes, there's a 'dame' involved. What sets "Crossfire" apart from most of the other films of that era, is that it's not just another murder mystery, however well executed. This is a film about

religious intolerance. That people are killed is but the flesh on the bones of a film about (without preaching), racial vilification. The director, Edward Dmytryk was a fine, and now, a sadly neglected director. He knew how to work within the confines of the studio system, and turn out a

quality film like "Crossfire" The original thrust of the films' message, was, apparently, about homophobia. This upset the Hays Office. and religious

persecution was substituted instead. There is not a wasted frame in this picture. It runs a taught 86 minutes. For my money, Robert Young, who plays the detective charged with solving who

murdered whom, and why, is a standout. This in face of an understated Robert

Mitcham, and a powerful performance by Robert Ryan as the psychotic

Montgomery - think of his role as Claggart, in the film "Billy Budd". Believe me when I say that it was truly refreshing to see a film (thank god for late night TV), where the actors can act, the dialogue is intelligent, and where

computer graphics and special effects were not used as a substitute for plot

Unlike most film noir, Edward Dmytryk's Crossfire, adapted from a novel by Richard Brooks, is not nearly as concerned with its murder mystery, which, at first sight, might seem superficially formulaic to the casual viewer, as it is with the complex motives of its characters and the oppressive ambience of its accurately rendered post-WWII setting, evoking feelings of disorientation, loneliness and entrapment. Under its classic noir exterior, it is about hardened and aloof veterans' struggle with postwar reintegration, utterly unable or unwilling to put their traumatic experiences behind them, and about their desperate attempt to redefine their goals. For those who define themselves by who their enemies are, such as hateful loner Montgomery (the brilliant Robert Ryan), this necessitates establishing a new one, a role filled here by Jewish intellectual Joseph Samuels (Sam Levene), who becomes the regrettable victim of a senseless hate crime.

At first the film appears to simply be going through the motions: After the ambiguously shot opening murder scene all evidence points, for reasons I cannot presently remember, to Corporal Arthur Mitchell (George Cooper). Captain Finley (Robert Young) investigates and is soon joined by the idealistic Sergeant Peter Keeley (Robert Mitchum), who is certain of Mitchell's innocence. Two minor military characters, Floyd Bowers (Steve Brodie) and Bill Williams (Richard Benedict) are also somehow involved. Monty murders the former, while the latter, after a stern, Hugh Beaumontesque talking-to, reluctantly aids Finley and Keeley in setting a trap for the dastardly ne'er-do-well. Or perhaps it was the other way around -- I watch so many movies that Bowers and Williams might as well have been stranded in the South Seas and mistaken for Gods by the natives. Or, possibly, they have to spend a night in a haunted house before they can claim their inheritance, where they find a monkey that can play baseball and helps the local team win some games. At any rate, there's also the obligatory femme fatale Ginny Tremaine (Gloria Grahame) and a compulsive liar (Paul Kelly, delivering a wonderful performance) who might or might not be her husband, and exists mostly for local color and comic relief.

However, the real meat of the piece is the complex characterization of the veteran archetypes. Mitchell, for instance, suffers from a classic case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (often also referred to as `shell shock,' `war neurosis' or `combat stress') and, like many suffering from this condition, is taunted and branded as a coward by his fellows. He has become utterly self-loathing and fears the return to normalcy. The scene in which is wife finally gets him to confront these fears and enables him to return to her (and his art) is one of the film's many highlights. Then there's Peter Keeley, perhaps the most positive military archetype on display here: the natural born leader. He is extremely charismatic and persuasive, has great concern and compassion for his fellow soldiers, and manages to bring out these qualities in others. It is Keeley's considerable understanding of both human nature and his compatriots' dilemma that makes him so valuable to Captain Finley, the only other character of equivalent moral fiber. Their polar counterpart is Montgomery, a sadistic, racist bully who vents his frustrations by mocking and humiliating his fellow men. Left without an enemy, he creates elaborate rationalizations to justify his hate for a substitute. This really could be the member of any marginally different group (in the novel, I am told, the victim is a homosexual), but in this case it happens to be a Jew. While one's initial reaction might be that Montgomery obviously fought on the wrong side during the war, it is important to remember that, at the time, anti-Semitism was far from limited to Nazi Germany. Indeed, after World War One, the financial and societal crisis of the Great Depression caused anti-Semitism to reach its zenith, and violent attacks on Jews were quite commonplace in many major cities. Later, the U.S. refused entry to countless German-Jewish refugees, interpreted by Hitler as a clear sign of approval for his Final Solution.

Still, as Captain Finley correctly points out, practically anyone would have done as a victim for someone like Montgomery.