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Wednesday, May 21, 2008

THE HOUSE ON 92nd STREET (1945)

The first of producer Louis de Rochemont’s wildly influential docu-drama pics (half the current CBS PrimeTime line-up comes out of these) is a spy procedural on how the FBI used a Nazi recruited German/American as a double-agent in NYC. Cleverly helmed by Henry Hathaway in a deceptively ‘flat’ style that helps to build verisimilitude as much as the breakthrough concept of shooting on actual locations with a starless cast does.  (Look fast for Paul Ford’s debut.)  Only Norbert Brodine’s noirish lensing & a few musical outbursts break past the ‘facts, just the facts’ style Jack Webb glommed on to for DRAGNET.  And it doesn’t hurt that so many of the labor intensive/analogue forensic procedures turn out to be far more cinematic than current CSI-style digital computer readouts.

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