Open Secret (1948)

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.

John Ireland was an actor with a moderate amount of charisma, who always knew his lines and gave his directors no trouble at all. Although he was a natural for TV and played many roles, including John Hunter in 39 episodes of "The Cheaters", Jeff Colby in 8 episodes of "Rawhide", and Shack Shackelford in 13 episodes of "Cassie & Co.", he never became a household word. In movies, his best role was as Jack Burden in All the King's Men (1949) for which he should have won that year's award for Best Supporting Actor, but unaccountably lost out to Dean Jagger in Twelve O'Clock High. Earlier in 1949, Ireland played the title role of Bob Ford in I Shot Jesse James. He continued the James association by playing the lead in The Return of Jesse James (1950), a minor film about a drifter who adopted the James name. In 1951, he starred in The Basketball Fix and The Bushwackers. In 1952 he was the lead in Hurricane Smith. So it's no surprise to find him as the star of our 1948 "B" movie, Open Secret, even though he does little with the role and is often upstaged by the support cast, particularly Anne O'Neal, here in the first of her fifteen movie appearances for 1948. In fact, Miss O'Neal's inquisitive landlady does tend to throw the whole movie off balance and she certainly creams our nominal heroine, Jane Randolph. We would also have liked to have seen more of some of the other support players, particularly Roman Bohnen and Sheldon Leonard. However, the movie does come to an effective action climax, well staged by director John Reinhardt—although the lesson or the moral does seem to be a bit exaggerated and over the top. Admittedly, Gentleman's Agreement (1947) erred in the opposite direction and was too namby-pamby in its approach to anti-Jewish prejudice, but I still thought the police response in an Open Secret situation would have been far more active, particularly as the movie seems to go out of its way to praise the police effort and make excuses for their lack of involvement. Available on a very good Alpha DVD.

Tight story on anti-Semitic/anti-"Foreigner" group operating in what appears to be part of NYC. Ireland discovers that his murdered Army buddy was somehow involved with said group, and tries to get to the bottom of it. In the process, he discovers some incriminating photos of local resident bigots, and nearly gets greased himself (of course). Novel to see Leonard playing a good guy (a police detective) who, being of Italian ancestry, has a personal interest in ridding the nativist bigots who terrorize his town (in the last scene, he actually walks down the street with a grin on his face). Two best pieces of dialog:Leonard to Jewish camera store owner Strauss (after beating up town bigots)- "Hey, Harry, what'd they to to you? Strauss- "Did you see the other guy? Take it easy on Ralph; I think the kid learned by now." Ireland- "Hey, you wanna see a doctor?" Strauss- "Doctor? I never felt better in my life."Leonard on phone, talking to a detective about catching gang's leader, Phillips- "This is Frontelli speaking. Send the wagon to 531 Parker, back alley...Phillips. (Chuckles slightly under his breath). Yeah, he was playing Hitler, but in the wrong precinct." 7 out of 10 *s.

"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.