I Was a Communist for the F.B.I.

I Was a Communist for the F.B.I. (Gordon Douglas, 1951) In one of those instances of Oscar head-scratching that involves rules (rather than taste...or lack thereof) this drama based on a Saturday Evening Post series, was nominated for an Academy Award...for Best Documentary Feature. Okay, there's some stock footage used for a couple of minutes, but the rest of it is a noir-shaded (with not a damn hint of red!) B-movie with not a hint of a real person, but only D-list actors that no one would recognize...unless you saw The Sound of Fury.

 

But, then it was the 1950's. Hollywood was doing a lot of back-bending in order to prove to right-wing government-types that they weren't being infiltrated by Communists in the same way that the State Department, the Truman Administration, and the U.S. Army weren't being infiltrated by Communists.

 

Hey, it must have worked! By the mid-50's, there were just 5000 registered communists in the country—1500 of them were F.B.I. informants.

Much like Matt Cvetic (Frank Lovejoy, who—I gotta say—looks a lot like then anti-commie Senator Richard Nixon). For ten years, Pittsburgh steel factory supervisor Cvetic has served two masters—the FBI and the Communist Party. He's worked his way up in the Party ranks to become chief party organizer for Pittsburgh, where he uses his influence to promote party members to higher positions and recruit new Party members. It seems a natural fit as it's no different than being a Union organizer or the even more common Old White Boys Network...or The Elks. The only difference being that after recruiting or promoting, you don't find the nearest pay-phone (it's the 1950's, youngsters!) and alert the FBI.

Or do you?

Anyway, his case-runner at the local Fibby branch is Ken Crowley (Richard Webb) who lets him know that a big Communist mucky-muck Gerhardt Eisler (Konstantin Shayne) is coming to The Burgh and he really should attend. Cvetic says, sure, give him a call when the old boy shows up—he's gotta go see his Mom. 

The reception is chilly. Oh, Mom is happy to see her good boy...but the rest of the family? Well, they know that Matt is a "dirty red" and treat him with contempt...even his son, Dick (Ron Hagerthy) is conflicted—he's getting harassed about it at his private school. Lips are curled when Cvetic is called to the Party meeting, where Eisler is greeted in a grand hotel suite with champagne and caviar. Some are more equal than others, eh comrade? "Better get used to it—it's the way we're all gonna live once we take the country over..." "The workers, too?" "The workers will always be the workers. The trouble with you is you're a fanatic."

At the meeting, the strategies are formed based on the old "Divide and Conquer" rule. Set people against each other by exposing weaknesses in the system, recruit minorities and key positions—like teachers—to the Party line. Then, sit back and do a little fomenting, cackling all the way about the "useful idiots" who advance the cause. Disparaging those very minorities with racial slurs—"You mean "negroes", doncha, Jim?" "Only when I'm trying to sell 'em the party-line"—hoping for tension that they can exploit for fund-raising ("The Pittsburgh branch needs dough. We're always in the red." <chuckle>). Lest, the irony is lost on the audience, Cvetic is always there to clarify the dichotomy ("In other word, Jim, your speech tonight had a double purpose...?"). "Duh!"

But, nobody points out the obvious that we're watching two sides of the same red cent. There are good guys (The F.B.I.) and the bad guys (The Commies), but, curiously they employ the same techniques. Yeah, it's bad the Communist Party is infiltrating Unions and schools, but the F.B.I. is infiltrating the Party—a couple of moments of thought exposes I Was a Communist for the F.B.I. as the same moral quagmire exhibited in The Departed (and its inspiration Infernal Affairs). If the good guys become partners with the bad guys, don't they become bad guys? Yeah, it's bad that the Communists are micro-phoning their meeting places to use as blackmail, but the Feds are tapping those same systems...to use as evidence. 

But, nobody stands up and says "Golly, Lieutenant, aren't we doing the same things the Communists are? I mean, I LOVE my country, but I'd like it a lot less if it was a country of spies and snitches! What sort of freedom are we protecting, anyway?"

No one says it because then the F.B.I. employee would be fired and possibly investigated and there wouldn't be a movie. Actually, there would be...but not one that looks at the country unquestioningly.

The Naked City

The Naked City (Jules Dassin, 1948) It started with Weegee. The homunculous photographer of New York's gritty, seemy side had published a book of his night-time photos of back-alley rendezvous, police-work, wet and dry, and New York's underbelly (fleas and all) bathed in the harsh glow of neon or Weegee's harsher strobe-flash. The book had the provocative title "Naked City," so, of course, it became a best-seller.

Producer Mark Hellinger bought the rights to make a movie of it with the intention of making a pot-boiler with the city of New York as the focal point and star. No big stars, just character actors would appear in it, and it would reflect Weegee's photography with the story of a police investigation of a lurid murder amid real New York locations. He hired screenwriters Albert Maltz and Malvin Wald for the screenplay, and to direct he brought in director Jules Dassin, whose prison drama Brute Force showed he had an unsentimental flair for that material.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, the motion picture you are about to see is called 'The Naked City.' My name is Mark Hellinger. I was in charge of its production. But I may as well tell you frankly that it's a bit different from most films you've ever seen. It was written by Albert Maltz and Alvin Wald, photographed by William Daniels and directed by Jules Dassin. As you see, you're flying over an island. A city. A particular city. And this is the story of a number of people. A story, also, of the city itself. It was not photographed in a studio. Quite the contrary, Barry Fitzgerald our star, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Don Taylor, Ted deCorsia and the other actors played out their roles in the streets, in the apartment houses, in the sky-scrapers of New York itself. And along with them a great many thousand New Yorkers played out their roles, also. This is the city as it is. Hot city pavements. Children at play. The building in its naked stone. People without make-up."

And for the most part, they succeeded.

Dassin can be quite "arty" in his direction, but restricted to real locations in the New York area in the middle of the day, he sometimes had to get what shot he could any way he could—hiding the camera in trucks, newsstands, anything that would keep from drawing a sizable crowd. A gawking clutch of citizenry would ruin the effect of a real story being played out. With the exception of a couple of process shots inside cars, the film pretty much keeps its promise.

But there is a disconnect. Despite the verisimilitude of the staging, the actors are still very much acting. The script, especially in its dialogue, is a bit too clever, and follows the conventions of Hollywood story construction exactly to code. This type of film had been done before with The House on 92nd Street directed by Henry Hathaway, during the noir/cost-cutting days of the studios, and would be done again with Panic in the Streets, directed by Elia Kazan. The city may be New York in 1948, but the story takes place somewhere between reality and artifice.

Hellinger, who also narrates the film (in a grand-standing display of ego that would only be equalled by Cecil B. DeMille, and less so, by John Huston and Orson Welles), succumbed to a heart attack when the film was being previewed, at the age of 44, ending a colorful career as newspaperman, screenwriter, producer, film executive, and New York gad-about. Despite the number of classic films with his name attached, Hellinger may be best remembered for the last line of his last film, which has endured and entered the pop culture.

"It is one o'clock in the morning again and this is the city. And these are the lights a child born to the name of Petori hungered for. Her passion has been played out now. Her name, her face, her history were worth five cents a day for six days. Tomorrow, a new case will hit the headlines. Yet some will remember Jean Dexter. She won't be entirely forgotten. Not entirely. Not altogether. There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them."

In 2007, The Naked City was chosen by the Library of Congress to be a part of the National Film Registry.

There are 700 movies in the Film Registry.* The Naked City is one of them.

Keeping tabs on the Naked City filming are Weegee and a pal,
a young photographer for Look magazine named Stanley Kubrick.

* They're listed here. This year's films will be announced at the end of the year.