Out Of The 1940s Crime Noir Night-When Anti-Semitism Rears Its Ugly Head-“Crossfire”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir film, Crossfire.

DVD Review

Crossfire, starring Robert Young, Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, RKO Radio Pictures,1947

In a recent review of a 1950s crime noir, Pickup At South Street, a film that combined the ordinary subject matter of this genre, some crime doesn’t pay scam, with a veneer of 1950s political anti-communist “red scare” political conformity I noted that putting the two together weakened the film. That is the case here as well although the combination is somewhat different-a seemingly senseless murder committed under mysterious circumstances in post-World War II New York and with a very heavy dose of plebeian anti-Semitism mixed in. Not that the question of anti-Semitism cannot be properly portrayed in film, witness the same years Oscar film, Gentleman’s Agreement, but under the plot line (and character development) here it just doesn’t jell. It might have worked just as well as a straight police procedural with no particular social message. Here’s why.

This is a tale of the three Roberts. Robert Ryan, a twisted pycho Army NCO lifer-type with a hard anti-Semitic craze, frames one of his men for a foul murder of a “civilian” shirker (said shirker in reality having been discharged as a result of wounds performing his military duty in the war). Needless to say this shirker (aren’t they all) is Jewish (a "Jewboy" in Ryan’s vernacular). And murder brings in Robert Young as a hard-bitten New York detective who is assigned the case and who smells a rat (Ryan) early on but can not quite put his finger on it. And enter too Robert Mitchum as a fellow Army NCO who also smells a rat, although he too is not quite sure who did it.

As the story evolves it is clear that Ryan’s chosen fall guy didn’t do it (although his whereabouts, his actions, and his alcohol-induced “fog” didn’t help his case) and that Ryan did. That part works, works decently enough for a second-rung crime noir, but there is never any strong motivation presented for Ryan’s anti-Semitism other than the plebeian platitudes common to gentile attitudes toward Jews then, and perhaps, now. I know from my own working class background that attitude, and the expression of those attitudes among 1950s Irish Catholic working-class kids (“they killed Christ, see”). They should have left this one to stand on its crime doesn’t pay, especially for pychos theme.