At the 1948 Oscar ceremony the winner was Gentleman's Agreement a film all about prejudice against Jews and the next film in the list and fellow nominee Crossfire also deals with similar themes. Crossfire begins with a fight between two men we don't see their faces but one is a soldier and the other man, Samuels, gets beaten to death and its up to Robert Young's police Captain Finlay to find out who did it. The original suspect is Mitchell who was drinking with Samuels and came back to his apartment but when Mitchell's superior Keeley comes back he gets a different story from him. Mitchell tells him that he ended up at a bar where he met a young woman, Ginny, and ended up letting himself into her apartment after she gave him the key. When he woke up he found a man there, later revealed to be her ex-husband, and left only to find the police waiting for him and retreating to a local movie theater. After conducting interviews Finlay realises that the only motive for Samuels murder is one of hate and because he is a Jew. Finlay finds out Mitchell didn't know of Samuels' Jewish background but fellow soldier Montgomery was also on the scene and mentioned it a few times. After Montgomery kills the other soldier who knows about the murder, Finlay tracks him down and shoots him as he tries to escape.
At first I found Crossfire a bit irritating it introduced new characters far too quickly for my liking and it was also hard to tell them apart as they were all in army uniform. However I did come to appreciate the little touches such as the use of shadow and the non-linear narrative. We are given two versions of events firstly Montgomery's account of what happened which he gives to Finlay and the second is Mitchell's testimony to Keeley which is shot in the movie theater the only light present in this scene coming from the screen. Unlike Gentleman's Agreement, Crossfire is never particularly preachy about prejudice apart from in one scene when Finlay tells one of the soldiers about how is grandfather was killed just because he was from an Irish background. In terms of the acting Robert Ryan is particularly convincing as the evil Montgomery and Paul Kelly is also particularly sinister as Ginny's ex husband and Roberts Young and Mitchum hold the whole thing together. But the best performance, and the only Oscar nominaed one, in the cast comes from Gloria Grahame as Ginny the girl who has been chatted up by more men than she cares to explain and just wants out of that life. Overall a very enjoyable crime story that has a strong narrative and some memorable characters.
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