When director John Reinhardt returned from his military service after World War II, he began
making films that were different in tone from the kind of movies he’d
specialized in before the war. In his early days in Hollywood, Reinhardt had
worked in the rather obscure world of foreign film production at big studios
like Fox and Paramount, mostly making small Spanish-language comedies and
musicals. During the war, Reinhardt had worked for the OSS under the command of
John Ford. When he returned to movie making in 1947, however, Reinhardt began
toiling in the world of low budget independent productions. His work from that
time forward would be darker, suffused with a sense of paranoia, overhung by a
deep pessimism.
His 1948 thriller OPEN
SECRET is an underrated entry in the run of films dealing with anti-Semitism
that were released after the war (and following the revelations of the
Nuremberg Trials). Studio pictures like CROSSFIRE and GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT had
already brought the subject into American movie theaters, but OPEN SECRET, in
its low rent way, is a more honest handling of the topic.
The story follows
newlyweds Paul and Nancy Lester (John Ireland and Jane Randolph) who have
arrived in an unnamed town to visit Ed, Paul’s old Army buddy. When Ed goes
missing, Paul and Nancy start poking around. Turns out Ed has some pretty
unsavory connections to a gang of white supremacists who operate out of a
nearby dive bar called The 19th Hole. Did Ed really fall for
neo-Nazi claptrap? How does a local Jewish storeowner named Strauss (George
Tyne) figure into this?
Like many of Reinhardt’s
independent productions, OPEN SECRET has a quick running time (67 minutes), a
notably small budget, and limited sets. Reinhardt uses the constraints to great
effect, though, to create a mood of near constant oppression and
claustrophobia. The very smallness of the film becomes a reflection of the
smallness of the lives of the characters. Consider The 19th Hole.
Strauss sarcastically calls it the “local country club.” What it actually is,
though, is a dank, dimly lit box where a group of haggard-looking men sit
around drinking and blaming the waste of their lives on “foreigners.” Beneath
plumes of cigarette smoke they stare into shot glasses and grumble about their shrinking
prospects.
If the film demonstrates the best qualities of Reinhardt’s work, it also bears some of his flaws as well. As is almost always the case, his female characters are weak and underdeveloped. Nancy Lester is a watery leading lady who is on hand mostly to wait around for her husband. The character actress Anne O’Neal lurks around corners as Ed’s landlady, but while her presence adds to the claustrophobia of the piece, there’s really nothing to her character besides her lurking. The one moment with a female character that rings true is an effective speech by Helena Dare as the abused wife of one of the gang members wherein she explains that he knocks her around to make himself feel big — tying his domestic abuse to the white male supremacy line his crew promulgates.
In a sense, of course, a
film like OPEN SECRET was several years too late. Had this same film been
released in 1940 it likely would have been so controversial it would have been
the subject of Congressional hearings. After the horrors of Auschwitz and
Dachau, however, any statement against anti-Semitism and Nazism was rendered
rather toothless. You don’t get many points for being right after the fact.
And yet, what makes OPEN
SECRET an interesting film is the very fact that it follows the defeat of the
Nazis but exists in a world where racism and bigotry are ongoing plagues. (In
2017, it must be said, the film feels uncomfortably relevant.) Among
Reinhardt’s noirs, this is perhaps his darkest film — quite literally, since
cinematographer George Robinson blankets the picture in shadows. The film
begins on the street at night, and it ends the same way. In between those
points there probably aren’t ten minutes of daylight in the whole picture. In
John Reinhardt’s noirs, it’s always midnight in America.
Postscript: A quick word
about George Tyne. In this film, he plays the plucky storeowner who helps
Ireland bring down the gang. A few years after making this film, however, he
was himself brought down by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He
was named as a Communist by actor Lee J. Cobb, and when he was called before
Congress he refused to name names. He was cited for contempt of Congress and
indicted by a federal grand jury in New York City. After being blacklisted he
didn’t make another film for thirteen years.
NOTE: The film has recently been restored and preserved by UCLA and will be showing on Oct. 14th and 16th at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago as part of its UCLA Festival of Preservation 2017.
