Two soldiers murder Samuels (Sam Levene), a Jewish man. While police captain Finlay (Robert Young) is in the apartment of the victim, Montgomery (Robert Ryan), show up. He’s one of a group of recently returned servicemen that had met the victim the night before. His story sets the police after Mitchell (George Cooper), the most innocent and depressed of the soldiers. Sergeant Keeley (Robert Mitchum) doesn’t buy it, and sneaks Mitchell away. Mitchell’s account of the previous night doesn’t help matters, as it involves mental breakdowns, lost time, and a club girl (Gloria Grahame).
Crossfire flirts with greatness, but can’t quite nail it. When Mitchell is roaming alone at night in a nightmare world, trying to get the attention of a prostitute (dime-a-dance girl due to the production code) and running into a man who might be her husband, might be a stalker, or might be something unknowable, that’s when the film soars. That’s when Noir style meets a Noir world, where the rules don’t apply and nothing makes sense. But that brilliance vanishes. For most of the running time, this isn’t a Noir film; it just looks like one. There are lots of good people: Finlay, Keeley, Samuels and his girl, the wife. And plenty of friendship and support. Only when Mitchell is on his own, and when we focus on Montgomery, do things get dark. The rest of the time this is a procedural mated to a message pic, and it is generally OK.
It’s shot well, edited better, and is reasonably well acted (Ryan, Grahame, and Paul Kelly as the odd man all excel while Mitchum is passable but bland), but Crossfire suffers from basic structural problems. It needed to decide on a lead: Finlay, Keeley, or Mitchell. We don’t get enough detective work for Finlay to be our protagonist, but too much for him to be a supporting character. For Keeley, we needed more on his relationship with the other soliders; without that he’s an unnecessary second detective. And with Mitchell we should have seen the world from his point of view, be given a chance to feel his loss and needs. We get too little from one of these three, and way too much from the other two. Because the filmmakers were so focused on the message, they didn’t bother to work out whose story they were telling.
Of course that message is important, particularly in 1947, when Hollywood was finally working out that maybe dealing with anti-Semitism was a good idea. Crossfire gets preachy at the end. Artistically that’s a problem, but socially it is probably for the best. Subtlety doesn’t work for the average movie-goer, so subtlety was cast aside, allowing Finlay to make speeches about racism.
In the novel, it wasn’t anti-Semitism, but homophobia that led to the murder. The filmmakers didn’t forget that, shaping the events leading to the murder to fit the mode of a gay pickup. At the bar, Samuels goes over to speak privately with Mitchell, the most effeminate of the soldiers. The two leave together for his apartment and the murderers follow. Crossfire can be talking about one form of hate as easy as another.