New Picture

Crossfire (RKO Radio). In Richard Brooks's wartime novel, The Brick Foxhole, some U.S. soldiers got drunk on a civilian's liquor, suspected him of being a homosexual, and beat him to death. RKO has changed the civilian (well played by Sam Levene) into a Jew, and Crossfire emerges first in the field in Hollywood's anti-anti-Semitic sweepstakes.*

Much of the movie is as brutally effective as a series of kicks in the solar plexus. Especially memorable: its accurately ugly talk, characterization and atmosphere, strung up to high melodramatic tension--one talent in which Hollywood still leads the world. Robert Young does modestly and well as the detective whose job it is to smell out the apparently unmotivated killer. Robert Mitchum has a great deal of laconic authority as the sergeant who holds the harassed gang of soldiers together; Robert Ryan turns in the scariest performance of the season as the over-talkative, pathological Jew-hater. Gloria Grahame is one of the very few well-baked tarts in any recent movie. And Paul Kelly has some remarkably effective moments as the man who hangs around her headquarters like an unwanted stray dog.

There are a few surprising failures in a movie so generally well made. Sample: the sergeant and a suspect, hiding out from the law in an all-night movie house talk so loudly that they destroy the suspense. But most of Crossfire is a first-rate thriller, notably well written (by John Paxton) and directed (by Edward Dmytryk). Its chief weakness concerns its main theme.

It is exciting to hear anti-Semitism discussed openly in a movie. But the chances are that this well-meant film will exasperate at least as many anti-Semites as it dissuades. It is gruesome to watch such a character as that played by Robert Ryan. But his hatred is so extravagant that most semiconscious anti-Semites will just comfortably set themselves apart from him.

* Late starters: Gentleman's Agreement, still shooting at Fox; Earth and High Heaven, written but postponed at Sam Goldwyn's.

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