MORE ON Louis de Rochemont
Edward G. Robinson plays an FBI agent who uses psychology and detection against Nazis in America. (The FBI never uses the third degree he informs his German suspects. Torture was a technique used only by bad guys.) Although its origins date to the 19th century the FBI was technically founded in 1935 and initially went after gangsters in their "war on crime" following the Depression. But the Nazis were a thrilling new enemy. Not only were they of foreign origin, but Hitler’s dream of world domination made them the perfect bad guys. It was only after defeating the Nazis and the Japanese that the FBI ran into trouble. Swelled enormously in size, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover needed a new crop of bad guys after WWII. Enter the Red Menace. Communist spies from Russia became the new enemy, hiding in every closet. With the threat of atomic weapons, everyone was a potential spy.
America had had spies before, from Benedict Arnold in the Revolution to blockade runners like John Wilkes Booth in the Civil War. But this new breed of super spy was more cunning, more ruthless, and potentially more dangerous than all who had come before. To defeat them, we needed our own super spies, mostly men in the mold of the British James Bond. The FBI ramped up and the CIA arrived. Hollywood created an entire dimension of covert operatives, working behind the scenes and doing whatever was necessary to stop our Cold War enemies from swallowing the world.
When Communist Russia fell apart, Hollywood – and America – needed a new enemy for a new war. The FBI and CIA and Homeland Security forces now battle Middle Eastern terrorists with the renewed vigor and violence onscreen. We are ten times more dangerous and it gets harder and harder to tell the good guys from the bad. Looking backward toward the origins of the spy thriller film, we can trace the evolution and hyper expansion of the American culture of war. Yes, enemies are out there. But as the world’s greatest manufacturer of weapons, America has grown dependent on the need for enemies and the need for the kind of endless war that Orwell talks about – the great boot stamping on the face of humanity forever.
In Confessions of a Nazi Spy we can see all the elements of what has evolved into films like the Borne Identity and the latest Bond film. The enemy wants to control the world, while we want only to protect the world for democracy. The enemy preys on the young, uneducated and poor, develops terrorist cells, uses the latest technology, corrupts the morals of its followers, lies and cheats, spends great sums, hides in plain sight, and uses propaganda and the media with great skill. We, of course, have to keep pace, then push ahead in this race to save the world. It is a scary cycle in which, in Hollywood at least, America seems to hold the moral high ground while the bad guys hold the bombs. "It’s a new kind of war," the film trailer declared in the battle against Nazi propaganda and spies in 1939, "but it’s still war!" And what would we do without it?
© 2008 J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved.
