La maison de la 92e rue

"The House on 92nd Street" is a 1945 film about the FBI's attempts to break up a spy ring during the war. A young man, William Dietrich (William Eythe), who has been recruited by the Nazis as a spy, informs the FBI of this and becomes their mole inside the organization. One of Dietrich's goals is to get the identity of the mysterious "Mr. Christopher" who gives all of the orders.

This is a black and white film with strong narration that probably had a great impact at the time of its release. Though the machinery used in the movie looks archaic now, back then it must have been fascinating for an audience to watch and seemed very high-tech. Plus some of the material being transmitted had to do with the top-secret atom bomb, which at the time of the film, had just been dropped.

The cast is small, consisting of Eythe, Lloyd Nolan, Leo G. Carroll, Signe Hasso, Gene Lockhart, and Lydia St. Clair. They're all solid. For a change, the women, Hasso and St. Clair, have the strongest roles in the film, and they give striking performances. Eythe was getting the big star build-up at 20th Century Fox. Since it was wartime, he could have made a place for himself at the studio the way that Dana Andrews did. However, when gay rumors reached Darryl Zanuck, Eythe's path became a rocky one, leading nowhere, as the studio continually demoted him and eventually got rid of him.

Well worth seeing.

The highly gifted natural and trained talent of Lloyd Nolan adorns this story of espionage and counterespionage in the US just prior to and after WWII was declared.

Playing a key FBI agent, Nolan displays the totally convincing work he rendered throughout his career. He heads a strong cast: Signe Hasso and Leo G. Carroll offer solid performances, and William Ethye is a good leading man.

Director Henry Hathaway mixes in authentic newsreel footage with care and balance. The result is a well done docudrama of the mid 40s.

It looks as though 20th Century Fox made a pact with the FBI for this project, with almost the complete Bureau being utilized for the shoot. The films emerges as a supreme tribute to the branch, with Chief Hoover's name frequently in evidence.

The work technically qualifies as propaganda, in which patriotic appreciation and support for the war effort is forthrightly projected.

Henry Hathaway directed this spy film presented in semi-documentary fashion starring Lloyd Nolan as FBI Inspector George Briggs, who is in charge of the counter-terrorist division that recruits German-speaking William Dietrich(played by William Eythe) to infiltrate a cell of German spies sent to America to gather information on the construction of the atomic bomb. The FBI allows its 92nd. street headquarters to remain open in order to identify its highest-level operatives, which involve a Mr. Christopher, though Dietrich's main contact is a woman(played by Signe Hasso) How long before he can identify his targets, or end up identified himself? Fine film effectively uses the semi-documentary approach, with Lloyd Nolan the standout, and would reprise the role in semi-sequel "The Street With No Name".

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.

Where in the world did they find hawk-nosed, beady-eyed Lydia St. Clair, the German Gestapo agent. One look from her, and I'd spill my guts in a flash. This is her only movie credit, so I'm guessing she had the same effect on the producers. Speaking of producers, Louis De Rochemont and TCF led the docu-drama trend that greatly influenced post-war crime drama. This is an early entry, and as a model of craftsmanship, there's none better, at least in my view. The location photography, FBI footage, and voice-over narration combine seamlessly with the melodramatic elements supposedly based on fact. Credit much of this to director Hathaway, one of Hollywood's supreme craftsmen.

Sure, the movie sometimes plays like an advertisement for the FBI. But if the data cited is correct, they had a lot to brag about in terms of counter-espionage. Notice, however, no mention is made of the thousands of Japanese-American citizens illegally interned on the West Coast. The Mr. Cristopher charade may be a gimmick, but it does build suspense as we guess the whereabouts of the mastermind. And when the "unveiling" finally comes, I suspect a few 1945 audiences were mildly startled. Seems a stretch to call this a noir since the lighting and atmosphere are naturalistic throughout. Anyway, as a blend of documentary style with story interest, it's hard to beat this tautly efficient little thriller.

In passing—check out the movie's initial release date, barely a month after the first public disclosure of the A-bomb following Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Looks to me like this required some furious re-writing and maybe some changes in Lockhart's role of research professor. No doubt inclusion of the new weapon was used to sell the film to information hungry audiences.