The House on 92nd Street

The House on 92nd Street is the sort of earnest propaganda movie Hollywood liked to pump out once in a while in the 1940s. It was made during wartime, so the justification is there, and it deals with a real case – the fifth column of Nazi-sympathising Americans working to overthrow their own government and install Hitler. And it’s based on a real case, the Duquesne spy ring. Director Henry Hathaway and his writers give us about ten minutes of sonorous scene-setting in a “ripped from the headlines” newsreel-voiceover style before introducing the hero – William Eythe’s Bill Dietrich, a second-generation German American who is recruited as a double agent by the FBI … Read more