Crossfire (1947)

Years of police work have taught Detective Finlay that where there’s crime, there’s motive. But he finds no usual motive when investigating the beating death of a man. The man was killed because he was a Jew. "Hate," Finlay says, "is like a gun." Robert Young portrays Finlay, Robert Mitchum is a laconic army sergeant assisting in the investigation of G.I. suspects and Robert Ryan plays a vicious bigot in a landmark Film Noir nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture. Edward Dmytryk (Murder My Sweet) directs, draping the genre’s stylistic backdrops and flourishes around a topic rarely before explored in films: anti-Semitism in the U.S. Here, Hollywood took aim at injustice and caught bigotry in a Crossfire.