Open Secret

The opening shot is an underlit traveling crane shot, followed by an upward-tilting Dutch angle of a series of backlit faces pronouncing "Guilty." It's an open secret this film was released in 1947, when every mystery was a film noir and every decent little guy faced a faceless conspiracy.

Charles Waldron Jr. tells his landlady that his old friend, John Ireland and his new bride, Jane Randolph, will be staying with him a few days. Then he hides a roll of film in his drawer and goes out. Eventually his houseguests notice he's gone and call in police sergeant Sheldon Leonard and gradually get entangled in a web of....

It's not the most subtly plotted of film noirs, and there's little mystery about what sort of nasty people are behind the evil doings, but it's certainly beautifully shot by horror-movie specialist George Robinson, and well performed by all hands. Director John Reinhardt was an Austrian actor who had switched to directing Spanish language movies for Fox in the early 1930s.

... in its exploration of anti-Semitism in a small town.

John Ireland and Jane Randolph play a pair of newlyweds who arrive in an unnamed town and are invited to stay at the apartment of an old service buddy of Ireland's. Only the buddy isn't there (they're told he'll be back by the landlady who lets them into his apartment). But as time passes the friend is a no show and there's a growing feeling that something sinister may have occurred, especially when the couple discover some white supremacist pamphlets hidden in a drawer.

In the early stages, the film hints at the prejudice in the town, with talk about "foreigners" and "staying with their own kind". Later, though, it becomes more blatant, with "a certain word" making no doubt about the object of the hatred. That bigotry insidiously trickles down to the neighborhood kids, too, slashing the tires of a car of a Jewish merchant (George Tyne in a quite effective performance), as well as preparing to throw rocks through his window.

The film has the visual elements of noir with its shadowy photography, appropriate for such a dark subject. The overall effect of the messaging in this film is, unfortunately, rather muted. The performances are adequate but restrained. However Roman Bohnen is appropriately loutish as a drunken bigot who strikes his wife (Ellen Lowe) across the face in a tavern.

And here this little "B" briefly, and tellingly, raises another ugly subject rarely broached in '40s dramas, spousal abuse. That is never more poignantly apparent than in the dialogue Lowe later delivers to Ireland in one powerful scene:

"Tell you what? How for the last five years he hasn't drawn a sober breath? How he beats me to prove that he's better than I am? He's a man. How he throws out the few flowers I pick, says they stink up the house. How he can't keep a job? Always blames it on (others)... never on to himself. How he's broken me. Torn me to pieces. Is that what you want me to tell you?"

Dialogue like that still has a strong impact, in combination with the tired anguish of Ellen Lowe's face and delivery.

1948 saw two major studio films dealing with anti-Semitism, "Gentleman's Agreement," which garnered three Oscars, and the noir drama, "Crossfire." The former dealt with the disguised, serpentine social prejudice of the upper class while the raw bigotry that leads too often to violence was the subject of the latter movie.

Exploring the huge selection of $4.99 "B" (and worse) DVD selection at a Manhattan store today I discovered 1948's "Open Secret," a meant-to-be second feature capitalizing on, I'm sure, "Crossfire."

With only the prolific and now venerable John Ireland as a recognizable star, a very decent cast directed by John Reinhardt brought a fairly - for the times - offbeat story to the screen with good performances.

Ireland plays Paul Lester, just married to the quite pretty Nancy-Jane Randolph, a comely young actress who enjoyed a brief cinema semi-ascendancy before giving up acting for the life of a trans-Atlantic socialite. The newlyweds are invited to stay with Paul's army pal who has to run an errand, which turns out to be his last, before the couple arrives. They settle in, awaiting the buddy's return.

It quickly develops that a set of photographs taken by the now missing friend may blow the cover of a small gaggle of gross bigots who rail against the newly arrived "foreigners" in the neighborhood. Men, wives and even the little kids are inculcated with hatred for people who, we're told, should go and live with their "own kind." To make sure no one misses what the Neighborhood Hood Watch means, the "foreigners" have Jewish names and, insuring viewers get the point, they're referred to as "kikes," a word rarely then found in scripts.

Despite an intrusive and boring score that never lets up, there's real drama here as the crypto-Nazis desperately seek the photos and negatives that even these morons understand may spell their undoing. Paul and Nancy are repeatedly forced by the script to assert their tolerance for all minorities. Thankfully the repetition doesn't detract from the unfolding story as Paul gets closer to the secrets, Nancy drifts towards danger, a good detective sergeant (reminiscent of Robert Ryan in "Crossfire") tries to uproot hate and a beleaguered Jewish storekeeper has a chance to show his mettle.

Also very unusual is a portrayal of spouse abuse - wife battering - and its soul-deadening effect that was way ahead of its time.

With a fairly low budget and some pretty cheap sets, this "B" feature garners a "B+" as well as a place in the history of film for contributing to the unmasking of anti-Semitism in postwar America.

7/10

"Open Secret" certainly owes a debt to "Crossfire," which came out a year earlier, but it stands on its own low-budget merits as not only a solid entry into the small field of 1940s films that dealt openly with racial and religious prejudice, but a very respectable noir thriller. The sets are simple, and there is no location footage at all -- but the director made up for that lack by using a great cast of character actors to portray some very hard-bitten men, women, and children, and, more unusually, he used sound in a dramatic way that continually moves the story forward while keeping the viewer in a state of jangled nervousness. Oh, yeah, its a very cool movie about antisemitism, of course; that goes without saying. But if you want to see it in purely filmic terms and don't care about the "message," it is equally cool. Watch for the fine low-key lighting and strange angle shots -- one of the best set-ups is Sheldon Leonard lounging akilter on a couch in his entry scene with a hugely close-up lamp and telephone in the foreground -- but also LISTEN for the doors opening and closing, telephones ringing, people screaming, sirens, noisy children, mumbling landlady, things dropping, drawers slamming; the sound effects are almost a Hitchcokian element in their own right. And pay attention to the continually changing status of the apartment door -- locked, unlocked, oops she forgot the key, locked, oops she left it open! -- there is a rhythmic and frightening quality to the door's continually shifting security status that is heightened by the always jarring sounds of intrusive door knockings and unexpected telephone rings. Considering what these folks had to work with, i think they succeeded admirably.

An offbeat thriller,which is also a plea for tolerance and a strong indictment of ordinary anti -Semitism , shortly after WW2 (two of the characters ,including the principal ,are former army pals ; the prologue, which ends with an ominous word (guilty) , the shirt, the booklets John Ireland finds in the drawer ("he may use them to wrap up his rubbish") , and a menace hanging in the air , these criminal people always called "they" , all this makes a fine film noir.