- Equal parts fascinating docu-drama and hagiographic history of the FBI, Henry Hathaway's The House on 92nd Street revels in the mundane and not-so-mundane details in the life of a double agent. The agent in this case is Bill Dietrich (William Eythe), and most of his time is spent in a remote shack encoding secret messages and broadcasting them to Germany over short wave radio. Or rather, that's what his German contacts (Signe Hasso, Leo G. Carroll, Alfred Linder) in New York believe he is doing. In reality, the messages are being diverted to a nearby FBI receiving station, where they eventually end up in the hands of Agent George Briggs (Lloyd Nolan), who passes along just enough detail to keep the German information pipeline flowing. Better the devil you know, I suppose.
- But back to those details for a moment. Microfilmed credentials are smuggled around in a watch as a matter of course. Messages are written in invisible ink and passed in antique books. An unassuming fashion design studio on 92nd Street is really a secret base for Nazi sympathizers and fifth columnists. A discarded cigarette leads the FBI to a stylist (Renee Carson) whose boyfriend (Gene Lockhart) once had a "Mr. Memory" act. In this case, he was memorizing the details of the American's secret Process 97, essential to the development of an atomic bomb. Yes, I realize that's basically the plot of The 39 Steps. Could that have been where the Germans got the idea?
- As its opening credits point out, many of the side characters in The House on 92nd Street are portrayed by real FBI agents, and real locations are used whenever possible. As such, the film's visuals are generally presented in a matter-of-fact manner, accompanied by the newsreel-style narration of Reed Hadley and some vaguely patriotic music. On one hand, this is a relatively groundbreaking and effective filmmaking technique, often attributed to producer Louis De Rochemont, that has been imitated countless times in the decades since its release. If one cannot provide the exact facts, then one can at least give the impression of having done so, right? On the other hand, The House on 92nd Street also comes across as a paid advertisement for the FBI, which includes among its many boasts the internment of thousands of "dangerous enemy aliens" during the war. Reed Hadley failed to mention how many of these people were actually guilty of anything, but I don't suppose many filmmakers would have had the courage to stand up to the government back in 1945.
