Most remembered for its original, Oscar-winning, Nazi-warning song, “Mona Lisa,” written by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston and popularized by Nat King Cole, Mitchell Leisen’s misleadingly titled Captain Carey, U.S.A. is one of a small set of noirs (The Devil Makes Three, 1952; The Crooked Web, 1955; etc.) that feature a WWII veteran heading back to Europe to track down something or someone after the war. In this case, Alan Ladd plays American Webster Carey, a captain in the O.S.S., a forerunner to the CIA, whose plot to sabotage a German railroad system is foiled by an unknown traitor, resulting in the apparent murder of his Italian girlfriend Giulia (Wanda Hendrix), who’s been hiding Carey and his gang in the basement of her wealthy family’s palazzo. Years later, when Carey spies a painting from the palazzo in a New York art gallery, his rekindled suspicions take him back to the Italian village to find the traitor and exact revenge. Returning to the palazzo of Countess Francesca de Cresci (Celia Lovsky), he encounters its new occupants, Baron Rocco de Greffi (Francis Lederer) and his very familiar new wife. As Carey digs deeper into past events, he encounters black marketeers, mob violence, and multiple murders. Illustrating how war-torn settings naturally lent themselves to the noir visual palette, revered cinematographer John F. Seitz is behind the lens, his noir instincts most resplendent during the first act in which Carey and company are hiding  underground, soon to be hunted down by Nazis with flashlights.