Fox probably had only good and honorable intentions releasing this movie on DVD in 2005, but it was misleading to quite a staggering degree that 'House on 92nd Street' was included in the company's noir collection.
If there is anything 'House' is not, noir is it! It is the earliest pioneering effort, mixing staged drama with documentary footage and a lot of faux-documentary as well. Today this dubious method is used all the time, but at the time it was novel.
'House on 92nd Street' is about a Nazi group trying to build a fifth column in New York up to and during World War II, and a heroic FBI agent's tireless endeavors as a counterspy to catch them. The secret ingredient of the atom bomb is at stake here! The tone of 'House' doesn't sit well with intelligent audiences of today. The propaganda is painted on in broad strokes and is rather annoying in its vulgarity, rather more easy to understand in the context of the political milieu in 1945. It looks with suspicion at other ethnicities than the most apple-pie typical Americans. The heroics of the FBI is wildly exaggerated, and the background music is patriotic and martial ad nauseam.
What is worse, because really fine propagandist movies have been made, movies that make a lot of sens even today - what is worse is that director Henry Hathaway is not given anything to work with. Only in the last 15 minutes or so is there room for any actual mise-en-scene, but by then it is too late to get our nerves on edge.
So what is there to admire here? From a cinematic point of view, not a lot to be sure. The political story is unfocused, the personal drama underdeveloped, the acting perfunctory. But the picture did have a following and it did inspire a whole series of movies with a documentary feel to them, for instance the far better 'Call Northside 777'.
If there is anything 'House' is not, noir is it! It is the earliest pioneering effort, mixing staged drama with documentary footage and a lot of faux-documentary as well. Today this dubious method is used all the time, but at the time it was novel.
'House on 92nd Street' is about a Nazi group trying to build a fifth column in New York up to and during World War II, and a heroic FBI agent's tireless endeavors as a counterspy to catch them. The secret ingredient of the atom bomb is at stake here! The tone of 'House' doesn't sit well with intelligent audiences of today. The propaganda is painted on in broad strokes and is rather annoying in its vulgarity, rather more easy to understand in the context of the political milieu in 1945. It looks with suspicion at other ethnicities than the most apple-pie typical Americans. The heroics of the FBI is wildly exaggerated, and the background music is patriotic and martial ad nauseam.
What is worse, because really fine propagandist movies have been made, movies that make a lot of sens even today - what is worse is that director Henry Hathaway is not given anything to work with. Only in the last 15 minutes or so is there room for any actual mise-en-scene, but by then it is too late to get our nerves on edge.
So what is there to admire here? From a cinematic point of view, not a lot to be sure. The political story is unfocused, the personal drama underdeveloped, the acting perfunctory. But the picture did have a following and it did inspire a whole series of movies with a documentary feel to them, for instance the far better 'Call Northside 777'.