Crossfire (1947)

Directed by Edward Dmytryk. Starring Robert Young, Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, George Cooper, Steve Brodie, Gloria Grahame, Sam Levene, William Phipps, Jacqueline White, Paul Kelly, Richard Benedict.

Detective Young investigates the murder of Levene, last seen in the company of a handful of demobilized soldiers; with Levene being Jewish, the motive seems to be a virulent case of anti-Semitic hate. Part murder mystery (though the culprit becomes pretty clear well before the halfway mark), part message movie, filmed with the deep shadows and lurid atmosphere of film noir. Simmering, dangerous Ryan stands out in the cast. Screenplay by John Paxton, adapting Richard Brooks’ novel, “The Brick Foxhole” (which addressed homophobia instead of anti-Semitism, but the Hays Code would never allow such an explicit mention); for the most part, it’s an intelligent and understated treatment, though one scene late in the film finds Young making heavy-handed speeches. The first B-movie to earn a Best Picture nomination from the Academy Awards, though it lost to Gentleman’s Agreement, a film dealing with the same issue in a very different way.

78/100