1945 - THE HOUSE ON 92ND STREET,

During World War II,  the mysterious Mr. Christopher is the head of a Nazi spy ring located in the United States.  Their job is to get the secret of "process 97," the atom bomb.  Lucky for America the FBI is on the case.

Usually considered a "semi-documentary."  This is a police procedural drama shot on actual locations.  The producer Louis De Rochemont and the director Henry Hathaway copied many of the newsreel techniques De Rochemont had used in his "March of Time" documentaries that played before feature films in the 1940's. 

The approach in this film was to show the FBI using meticulous scientific and investigative techniques to crack the spy ring.  What comes off watching it now is how creepy the whole thing is with the FBI filming every little move the spies make.  The ongoing gathering of every piece of information by the FBI gives the whole thing a "Big Brother" kind of feel throughout the film.

The FBI would not have cooperated with this film unless it showed them in the best possible light and their halos are polished mighty bright.  Still the film does have a little bit of a backbone to it, the Nazi spies are not a bunch of stupid ideologues and there is a fairly clever plot twist at least clever for the 1940's anyway.  

Like a lot of trend setting films, the years have worn away the special qualities of this story.   On location filming is no longer a big deal and police procedural dramas have borrowed so much from  films like The House on 92nd Street, it just doesn't look very special anymore.

The success of this film did help get studio filmmakers out of the back lot and onto real locations.

88 minutes.