The past few Academy Awards have made huge strides in genre representation, honoring films that wouldn’t have had a chance of ever appearing even ten years ago. Films likeThe Substance,Get Out,andEverything, Everywhere, All At Onceinspired huge watermark moments that compelled the Academy to go into uncharted territory, forever changing what an “Oscar-worthy film” could look like. Genre has always had an uphill battle when it comes to the Oscars, even as far back as the 1940s, whenCrossfiremade history by being the first true B-movie to be nominated forBest Picture, along with four other Oscar nominations. Not only that, it was part of one of the first major attempts by Hollywood to directly confront a hot topic issue that was pervasive in the world.
What Is ‘Crossfire’ About?
Crossfireis essentially aprocedural murder mysteryin which a young soldier is found beaten to death, and police captain Finlay (Robert Young) and Sergeant Keeley (Robert Mitchum) team up to sniff out the culprit. In an investigative trail that recallsCitizen Kane’s groundbreaking narrative structure,Finlay and Keeley track down different eyewitnesses who saw the young soldier the night that he was last seen alive. Their journey throughout the night forces them to cross-examine the testimony of various individuals, including a tight-lipped lady of the night named Ginny (Gloria Grahame), a nerve-wracked corporal named Mitch (George Cooper), and Monty (Robert Ryan), an ex-cop veteran who’s a bit too eager to be of help and seems to always have a chip on his shoulder. At a brisk 85 minutes and barreling towards the center of an internal storm,Crossfireremains tautly exciting and expertly engineers a literate yet spare scriptwhere every line is loaded with the barely hidden subtext of what the film is really about.
‘Crossfire’ Touches on Post-WWII Anxiety
By taking the unvarnished pulp of the material and dressing it up in the rawness of low-budget noir,Crossfirefinds the emotional and psychological heft needed to carry the film’s heavy subject matter. Economic uncertainty and the hangover of America recently coming out ofWorld War IIpermeate throughout the typical genre proceedings of the plot.Everybody is feeling a pang of mistrust and restlessness over the futureand the need to feel secure about their place in a country that’s supposed to take care of them. Two of the film’s Oscar nods were forBest Supporting Actorfor Robert Ryan andBest Supporting Actressfor Gloria Grahame, and their characters tap most directly into this deep-seated anxiety.
Why ‘M’ is the Best Noir to Predate Noir
Fritz Lang’s grotesque crime drama came years before the noir era, and yet it remains one of the strongest works of the genre.
Grahame, a noir icon who’d later win an Oscar for a similar role inThe Bad and the Beautiful, isa flinty and wary survivalist who creates much of the tension from how unwilling she is to give important informationthat would crack the case open. Ryan, a tough-guy icon who was often the emotionally explosive heavy for films likeThe Dirty DozenandThe Wild Bunch, steals the show asa bitter and vengeful man consumed by hatred and resentmentfor his perception that Jewish people got benefits after the War that he didn’t.Crossfireis ultimately a film about how hatred can be exacerbated by social conditions that haters choose to twist the facts of reality in service of their own racist logic, and its Oscar success proved to be at the center of a massive turning point in Hollywood history.
‘Crossfire’ Represents an Important Moment in Hollywood History
In the wake of World War II,more mainstream films were made that directly confronted the specter of antisemitismthat was on the rise in the world.Crossfireonly chose to focus on antisemitism because the novel it was based on was instead focused on homosexuality, andits director,Edward Dmytryk,said that he and the production knewthe Hays Codewould never let homosexuality be talked about openly. 1947, the year thatCrossfirewas released, also saw the release ofGentleman’s Agreement, another upfront indictment of antisemitism that ultimately beatCrossfirefor both Best Picture and Best Director. This would prove to be both the apex and the beginning of the end for Dmytryk,who would soon become one of the Hollywood Ten, excommunicated from the industry due to his leftist beliefs, courtesy ofthe McCarthy witch hunts. There was speculation thatCrossfirelost out at the Oscars due to the involvement of Dmytryk and producerAdrian Scott, who was also one of the Hollywood Ten, and it’s tempting to believe this, especially since the Best Director winner was notorious ratElia Kazan. Whatever the case may be,Crossfirestands as a snapshot of a monumental shift in Hollywood history, when the industry seemed to make efforts towards creating and appreciating truly socially conscious activist art. Unfortunately, much like howCrossfirecaptures how human frailty caves to conservative fears, Hollywood soon caved for the sake of saving its own neck.
