Crossfire (1947)

Crossfire (Edward Dmytryk, 1947) Shadows of a fight splay out diagonally across one apartment wall. Then a body flies across the room, knocking out the one remaining light. Everything goes black until hands twist alight the bulb in the lamp on the floor, exposing only the lower part of the room. One man is dead on the floor, another is conked out in an over-stuffed chair. The third is busy: he checks the body for signs of life, runs for the chair and rousts the man out of it. Then, more light as a door opens and two back-lit figures rush into the corridor, and are gone. 

It's film-noir done by two of the best Hollywood had to offer in the genre, writer John Paxton and director Edward Dmytryk, making a scene of violence with no dialogue and an efficient way of shooting that tells you what's going on but not by who, keeping the mystery alive in that movie short-hand that seems to have gone out of fashion in an expositioned-to-death world. Paxton and Dmytryk had done the Dick Powell version of "Farewell, My Lovely" (retitled Murder, My Sweet in case anybody thought that it was another Dick Powell musical) and in this Dore Schary production for RKO, they were using the form in the call for social justice in the case of antisemitism. This B-movie was taking on the subject the same year as the A-list Gentleman's Agreement.

Except the book it was based on wasn't about anti-semitism. That novel, "The Brick Foxhole," written by future movie writer-director Richard Brooks, didn't have a Jewish murder victim. In it, the man was homosexual, but it would take a few more decades before Society and Hollywood would have the grit to tackle that, without putting its own derogatory coloring on it. But, Dmytryck was determined to make a statement out of it, especially in light—or dark—of the Holocaust of the recent war. And he couched it in a film noir with two separate investigators, three actors named Robert, and a whole lotta flashbacks.

That opening scene is a chiaroscuro portrayal of the murder of one Joseph Samuels (Sam Levene) and it's up to police Captain Finlay (Robert Young) to track down the culprit who beat Samuels savagely to death. The first to talk is Samuels' girlfriend who found the body. From her and a wallet found at the crime scene, Finlay finds out with whom she and Samuels had drinks with earlier. Then, a knock at the door reveals "Monty" Montgomery (Robert Ryan), who knows what the girl-friend is talking about and tells his side of the story, giving Finley leads...and three suspects. But, no motive.

What's different is that the three suspects are all pre-deployment soldiers in the U.S., not unlike Monty himself. And the most suspicion falls on Mitchell (George Cooper), who was there that night, and has had a rough time of it in the Army. His sergeant, Keeley (Robert Mitchum) explains: "He's homesick. He's wifesick. Maybe she said something in one of her letters that made him suspicious of her love life. I don't know. Anyway, he's got snakes. He's been nuts. But not nuts enough to kill somebody." Keeley's friends with Mitchell and has tried to get his wife to visit him to straighten him out. Instead, Mitchell's been going sweet on a bar hostess (Gloria Grahame), who may or may not be married, but is only interested in him for the booze he buys while she's keeping him company.

Sgt. Keeley starts his own investigation, trying to protect his pal, Mitchell, from Finley and the cops and to find out what happened that night in Samuels' apartment before Finley can find and arrest him. He finds Mitchell in a movie theater and is able to find out that Mitchell and two other soldiers had drinks with Samuels before going to the scene of the crime. And then murder happened. But why? Finley's interview with another soldier, Floyd (Steve Brodie) doesn't reveal any motive.

It's when Finley and Keeley's parallel investigations stop working at cross-purposes and they begin to collaborate that it becomes clear that it was a hate crime, and their interview with Grahame bar-hostess and another pertinent murder points them to the real culprit and his impulses which seem to run counter to what the war that was just won was all about, and that the underlying issues of that war have their own parallels imbedded inside the United States, as well. Finley sums it up in one of the tidy little speeches in the film: "Hating is always the same, always senseless. One day it kills Irish Catholics, the next day Jews, the next day Protestants, the next day Quakers. It's hard to stop. It can end up killing men who wear striped neckties. Or people from Tennessee."

The film was a wake-up call hidden inside a police thriller, with the dark hues of the grimier, more cynical post-war sensibilities that were the underpinnings of the film-noir genre. But, rather than cut-throat gangsters and the criminally-motivated, Crossfire hit closer to home. It garnered Academy Award nominations for Grahame and Ryan, as well as for director and screenplay. It also is one of the few films in the B-movie domain of the noir films to be nominated for Best Picture.

Northwest Passage: Book 1 - Roger's Rangers

Northwest Passage: Book 1- Roger's Rangers (King Vidor, 1940) The posters warned Northwest Passage was "Not Suitable for Children" which it might be, with its stories of atrocities, men who fight with muskets and axes, and the "good of the many" philosophy. But, it's such a "Boy's Own" adventure...if "for" adults...that one is tempted to dismiss the warning. But, one does so at their peril.

It's 1759, during the French and Indian Wars (look it up) in North America, and young Langdon Towne (Robert Young) has come back to Portsmouth, New Hampshire from Harvard (after being expelled) to ask the hand of his sweetheart, Elizabeth Browne (Ruth Hussey). Bad timing. Beyond that, Dad Browne, a clergyman, thinks Towne's profession, an artist, is a poor prospect for his precious daughter, and Langdon, rebuffed, goes out and does what any young man would do under the circumstances—he goes out to the local pub and insults the local British constabulary...who just so happen to overhear him from the next room. With the help of "Hunk" Marriner (Walter Brennan), friend and fellow flagon-drainer, the two manage to get in a fight with the two red-coats (to avoid being arrested) and are soon on the lam.

On the lam to another bar, that is. If Mr. Browne thought Langdon was lousy husband material before, it's a good thing he isn't around to look down his nose at this. At that rustic pub, they meet Major Robert Rogers (Spencer Tracy) who treats the two fugitives to his favorite drink, "Flip," and tales of his explorations. The stories are very good, but the rum must be better, because the next morning they wake up at Fort Crown Point as recruits for Rogers' latest mission—to take on the Abenakis native tribe and stop the French at the town of St. Francis, the starting point for a lot of attacks on "civilized" settlements. Langdon's secondary mission, and apparent only usefulness, is to map the route for future expeditions...and posterity. 

That is...if he survives. That trek is arduous, even without the man-made hazards along the way (director Vidor filmed in the wilds of Idaho), which are recounted in vivid excruciating detail. 142 men start on the mission, which starts out with the best of intentions and the best of planning, but Nature has a way of upending plans and what Nature doesn't delay, men and happenstance will.

After taking whaling boats up Lake Champlain, Rogers and troop hoofs it to make their way up to St. Francis, fully expecting to be able to meet up with the boats at the end of the expedition and fully expecting for their provisions to last the journey...with hunting being the fall-back. But rifle-fire will give away their position, so they have to make do with rationing what they have and what they haven't lost. Men are lost to attack and to injury, and rather than continue with the troop, slowing them down and leaving them vulnerable, they are merely left...to fend for themselves or die trying...or not trying.

It's a more dangerous version of The Lost Patrol, with the men gradually being picked off, moving forward even when they're convinced they have no chance of success, their return-boats and extra provisions stolen, and finally making it to St. Francis, where they stage an attack so intense and complete that they've become indistinguishable—in methods and ferocity—from the very people they've condemned as savages. There is no parsing for cause or motivation. It's just "kill 'em quick and kill 'em dead" where by flintlock, bayonet or tomahawk, and, just as with the men they've left behind, there's no time for funerals. If there's any message to be sent it's in the mutilated bodies and burning village.

But, that burning village is sure to be noticed from a distance. And with their left-behind provisions already taken and no food to be had except for dried corn in the village, the Rangers attempt to get to the closest fort, Fort Wentworth, and hope that they're met by re-enforcements and food. In the hope that they can find fishing and game, they head to Fort Wentworth by way of Lake Memphremagog, only to find they shouldn't tarry as there are signs that the French are nearby. Staggering behind them is Langdon, shot during the battle at St. Francis ("First thing I've had in my stomach for days...") and unwilling to be left behind.

Leave it at that. The travails of Northwest Passage only get worse—and even plunge deep into the macabre as mutiny, insanity and cannibalism all work against Rogers' increasingly hollow "only a few miles left, men" optimism. "A Boys Own" adventure? Hardly. It is tough, unrelenting in its depiction and description of the hard-scrabble life and "take no prisoners" racial hatred in the early "civilized" days of the country. And despite its eye-popping photography, the expense of the location Technicolor work kept the movie from making a profit and cancelled any attempts to make a "Book 2." Still, an interesting, troubling, starkly surprising film that makes you amazed at what "they" got away with back in the studio days.