The House on 92nd Street (1945)

The House on 92nd Street (1945) is an FBI espionage undercover Nazi wartime propaganda film noir starring William Eythe as Bill Dietrich (based on FBI double-agent William G. Sebold); Lloyd Nolan as Agent George A. Briggs; and Signe Hasso as Elsa Gebhardt (based on the spy Lilly Stein)

The film was made with the blessing and backing of the FBI — so much blessing in fact that Bureau director, J. Edgar Hoover, appears during the introductory montage. 

The FBI agents shown in Washington, D.C. were played by actual agents and the film's semi-documentary style inspired other films, including The Naked City and Boomerang.

Producer Louis de Rochemont was known for creating some pre-War anti-Nazi material for the March of Time newsreel series in which he mixed documentary footage with staged re-enactments.  

J. Edgar Hoover makes a brief appearance in film noir The House on 92nd Street (1945)

It's maybe no surprise then that The House on 92nd Street opens with a lengthy narrated segment that is exactly that, using real life footage of spies coming and going from the German embassy, some shot from windows, cars, and rooftops, providing actual glimpses of real secret agents skulking about in a format that audiences would have been used to.

Despite this footage and the semi-documentary style, there is no actual desk to camera performance in The House on 92nd Street — desk to camera describing that segment styling that became popular later in the decade in which movie audiences would be addressed by a figure of authority, seated at a desk.

Streets of New York in The House on 92nd Street (1945)

The fictional element begins with the the story of an outstanding cadet who becomes an American double agent (played by William Eythe) who trains for six months with the Nazis in Hamburg and then returns to Germany to infiltrate the spy German ring of the mysterious “Mr. Christopher”. 

Surprisingly, the German spies are hunting for nothing less than the American plans for the atomic bomb — a fact signalled by an opening title card which announces that the release of the film had to wait until the A-Bombs had been dropped upon Japan.

Before there were digital databases — The FBI in The House on 92nd Street (1945)

The House on 92nd Street is perhaps many decades after the fact simply marketed as a film noir, when it may be a more regular semi-documentary espionage propaganda film, for want of a better style or genre description. And film noir is a wide church, and covers a multitude of styles and has room for many.

Lloyd Nolan in The House on 92nd Street (1945)

The various and often much-argued definitions of what constitutes a film noir does allow for a lot of this, and it sometimes seems like many an unnecessarily invalid old movie has had the film noir label added to it. So like many films — including many in the espionage genre like The House on 92nd Street (1945) are not exactly film noir — and yet they still has a place in the film noir story.

Further, there is a fair amount of cross-over between various styles and genres and high-period first rate, out and out, 24 karat, flawless, unadulterated, pure and simple, transparent, kosher, unalloyed and authentic classic film noir, that it gets hard to discuss noir at all without bringing them in.

The espionage genre for a start does involve deceits and often stories of identity and deception, and film noir style photography with its accentuated shadows and unusual angles lends itself too, to other styles. The discussion of film noir is the discussion of a movement and a trend, it's the examination of a style and of factors far outside of Hollywood — and that includes World War 2. A war film such as Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) could barely be said to have much relevance for an discussion of film noir. On the other hand, a war film such as The House on 92nd Street (1945) has much in common with noir styles and themes.

Amercian Nazi base in The House on 92nd Street (1945)

The House on 92nd Street (1945) is above all an America-first propaganda piece and one of several semi-documentary films that boosted the FBI. It was created in the twilight of World War II and tells a real story, about covert Nazi cells within the U.S.

The reverence paid to Hoover is justified by this patriotism, but the film and its messaging feels at its strongest in the wide array of technologies displayed. As James Bond later proved in the 1960s, technology is a great subject for espionage in cinema as it is both relevant, and dynamic, makes for great entertainment, as well as wow factor. Even displayed dryly as it is in this picture, the technology is still exciting, and there is a huge amount of it here. 

Nazis hidden in America in The House on 92nd Street (1945)

In The House on 92nd Street (1945) there are all sorts of laboratory techniques on show — including spectrometry. There is also an early version of the internet, in the form of the biggest room of filing cabinets and agents you will ever see — a huge and organised research base from where the bureau can quickly pull facts and ID.

The patriotically charged music adds to this, as does the authoritative narrator, and the long lingering shots of the Federal Bureau of Investigations building. It's not typical or even atypical noir, as it is not about one person's struggle with alienation or identity, but as we have seen, the film noir tree has its various branches. 

Cutting edge surveillance in The House on 92nd Street (1945)

The cutting edge surveillance is excellent. There are secret two-way mirrors, tricked-out medicine cabinets, coded messages and their subsequent decoding, and even disguises and a James Bond style watch that conceals micro-fiche, passed between agents in Europe, to be switched at US customs.

The subject of the German American Bund — the Amerikadeutscher Volksbund —  Nazis in America before and during World War 2 — is fascinating and in cinema only generally dealt with within the stylised confines of film noir — usually in the espionage format.

The USA Bund as pictured in The House on 92nd Street (1945)

It was not as uncommon as we might like to imagine in fact, in the years leading up to World War 2, especially with over a million German Americans living in the US.  At the same time American exchange students went to Germany and returned with glowing reviews, while celebrities such as Charles Lindbergh denounced Jewish people for pushing the U.S. toward unnecessary war. 

In its various expressions, the pro-Nazi movement in the US was not focused on creating a military alliance with Germany or even worse bringing the U.S. under Nazi control — the latter was something that even Hitler himself thought would not be possible. And so the main aim of the US Nazi movement was keeping the U.S. out of war in Europe — and as here, espionage.

It was in fact possible for those who had participated in Nazi-sympathetic groups to later disguise their beliefs in the post-war anti-communist drive — and in fact this was a dynamic that many claimed had driven them to fascism in the first place. One survey from 1938 found that more Americans thought that communism was worse than fascism, and it was also not unusual for such groups to think that fascism was tougher on communism than was democracy.

Streets of Nazi noir in The House on 92nd Street (1945)

Those drawn to Nazism then could truthfully argue that they had always been anti-communist without revealing that they’d been fascists, and by the late 1940s, America was so worried about communism that this might have been good enough an argument to let it pass.

Photographs and recreations of groups for example with swastikas — as in The House on 92nd Street (1945) —  had in fact little to do with Nazi Germany. Such groups may have aspired to Nazism, but in fact they lacked support from the wider German-American community, and even solid support from Germany itself.

Signe Hasso and William Eythe in The House on 92nd Street (1945)

In May 1933, Heinz Spanknöbel received authority from Rudolf Hess, the deputy führer of Germany, to form an official American branch of the Nazi Party. The branch was known as the Friends of New Germany in the U.S. andThe Nazi Party referred to it as the National Socialist German Workers' Party of the U.S.A.

Although the group had a good presence in Chicago, it remained based in New York City, having received support from the German consul in the city. Spanknöbel's organization was openly pro-Nazi. Members stormed the German-language newspaper New Yorker Staats-Zeitung and demanded that the paper publish articles sympathetic to Nazis. Spanknöbel's leadership was short-lived, as he was deported in October 1933 following revelations that he had not registered as a foreign agent — and The Friends of New Germany dissolved later in the 1930s.

The German American Bund, led by Fritz Kuhn, was formed in 1935 and lasted until America formally entered World War II in 1941. The Bund existed with the goal of a united America under ethnic German rule and following Nazi ideology. 

The Bund proclaimed communism as their main enemy and expressed anti-Semitic attitudes. Inspired by the Hitler Youth, the Bund created its youth division, where members "took German lessons, received instructions on how to salute the swastika, and learned to sing the 'Horst Wessel Lied' and other Nazi songs." This kind of thing is briefly portrayed in The House on 92nd Street (1945) and is an interesting item of little-seen anti-Americana.

The Bund continued to justify and glorify Hitler and his movements in Europe during the outbreak of World War II. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Bund leaders released a statement demanding that America stay neutral in the ensuing conflict and expressed sympathy for Germany's war effort. The Bund reasoned that this support for the German war effort was not disloyal to the United States, as German-Americans would "continue to fight for a Gentile America free of all atheistic Jewish Marxist elements."

The House on 92nd Street (1945)

After an infernal amount of internal and leadership disputes, the Bund's executive committee agreed to disband the party the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. On December 11, 1941, the United States formally declared war on Germany, and Treasury Department agents raided Bund headquarters. The agents seized all records and arrested 76 Bund leaders.

Treading back in time The House on 92nd Street (1945) is based on the real life case of William G. Sebold. Sebold was  a war hero involved in bringing down the Duquesne Spy Ring in 1941, the largest convicted espionage case in the history of the United States. On January 2, 1942, 33 Nazi spies, including the ring leader Fritz Joubert Duquesne were sentenced to more than 300 years in prison. One German spymaster later commented that the ring's roundup delivered ‘the death blow’ to their espionage efforts in the United States. J. Edgar Hoover called his concerted FBI swoop on Duquesne's ring the greatest spy roundup in U.S. history. For such a largescale success and fascinating story, it's a surprise there is only one film about it. For heroism, patriotism, intrigue and social comment, there could be few better stories in the era.

This does elevate The House on 92nd Street (1945) to something more than a passing espionage film. The producers and the FBI clearly thought this too, and Lloyd Nolan would reprise his role as Inspector Briggs in the sequel, The Street with No Name (1948). In that film, Briggs and the FBI agents would take on organized crime.

The documentary noir of The House on 92nd Street (1945) was also a new fangled device, and became a briefly popular form, possibly culminating in documentary-noirs like Jules Dassin’s The Naked City (1948). 

FBI surveillance in The House on 92nd Street (1945)

Further more, The House on 92nd Street (1945) has all the elements of the police-procedural that ushered in a shift in the classic noir cycle from the early 1950s. Again this was something that was not known in 1945, and became a solid movie trend — whether it was the police, or here the FBI — driven towards the step by step and committed defence of American freedoms and the destruction of threats.

Signe Hasso and Leo G. Carroll in The House on 92nd Street (1945)

The technology is second to none, and is rarely bettered in the film noir cycle — whether it is the punch-card reading computer finding a finger-print match, or the spectrograph brought in to identify the brand of lipstick found on a butt in an ashtray — again like the police procedural the movie offers high drama wrapped up in a deeply solemn purpose.

Raid on the Nazi base in The House on 92nd Street (1945)

Finally, for those that stick up for the pure grade film noir and say that this kind of film has no place in the canon, the expressionism and shadow work of the finale with its sneaking gunfight, gas grenades, stairways and dark and suspenseful confusion is noir photography of the first water —  pure noir art on display to bring The House on 92nd Street (1945) to a shuddering and exciting close. 

You'll also enjoy the brilliant cross-dressing display from Signe Hasso —  this kind of cross-dressing with the classic 40s look of overcoat and hat, being something there could have been a lot more of across the style.

The House on 92nd Street (1945) on Wikipedia