The House on 92nd Street
                                                                                                      
Director: Henry Hathaway
Year: 1945
Rating: 6.0
The good old days when the FBI was run by J. Edgar Hoover. He is shown right at the beginning of the film and not in women's clothing. This film from Fox could have been funded by the FBI. It makes them out to be so perfect. But nevertheless, it is actually quite good and effective. Paced very well and very no nonsense. If I was younger, I would be signing up with them. This semi-documentary styled film announces that they could not have told this story before the Big One was dropped on the Japanese. It was too top secret. I would actually hope that Fox didn't know about this till they made the film. It wasn't exactly public information.



Even before the war, the Nazis were planting and recruiting agents all over America. And the FBI was watching them and taking notes. Many of the recruits were German-Americans and part of the American Bund - who held a famous rally in Madison Sq. Garden where they gave the Nazi salute and had a huge portrait of Hitler on the wall. They recruit Bill Dietrich (William Eythe) to become an agent and send him to Germany for training. What they don't know is that he immediately went to the FBI and they told him to go undercover. The FBI has come into information that the Nazis are trying to collect information on Project 97, building an atomic bomb.



It is up to the FBI under Inspector Briggs (Lloyd Nolan) to stop them.  Once back in New York, Dietrich makes contact with the lovely Elsa Gebhardt (Signe Hasso) who runs a cell of them. She is as cold as a popsicle with less personality. All business, no romance. It is narrated by Reed Hadley in precise clipped sentences as he takes us through the case. Based to some degree on the real espionage case of the Duquesne Spy Ring in which 33 Nazi spies were captured. At the end of the film, it claims that because the FBI was so efficient there were no instances of sabotage or major secrets being transmitted to Germany. Our nuclear secrets were safe. If the Nazis had managed to steal them, we might all be speaking German today and understand Nietzsche. Safe, till the Russkies got them years later.  Directed by Henry Hathaway who sticks to the story like it is the bible with nothing thrown in of a personal nature.