The Fallen Sparrow is a 1943 American spy film noir starring John Garfield, Maureen O'Hara, Patricia Morison, and Walter Slezak.

Nazi spies pursue an American, John "Kit" McKittrick, a Spanish Civil War veteran in possession of a priceless keepsake, who returns home to find out who murdered his friend.

When Louie, a New York police lieutenant, dies under suspicious circumstances, Kit cuts short his convalescence in Arizona and returns to the city to investigate.

After arranging to stay in the apartment of another friend, Ab Parker, he begins to make the acquaintance of the various guests at the party at which Louie made his fatal plunge.

Among them are noted Norwegian historian and wheelchair-using refugee Dr. Christian Skaas; his nephew, Otto; Kit's old flame, Barby Taviton, who hosted the ill-fated party; and Toni Donne.

Kit is shaken when Dr. Skaas discusses the superiority of modern methods of torture over those of the past; it jibes too closely with what he endured.

In front of key witnesses, Kit gives Toni a medallion from the battle standard, mounted in a necklace—a declaration for all to see that he knows where the flag is.

[4] On August 20, 1943, The New York Times observed: “As the story of an extraordinary conflict between a group of Nazi agents and a onetime Spanish Loyalist volunteer whose sanity has been wrenched by their tortures, it is a far-from-flawless film….But by virtue of a taut performance by John Garfield in the central role, and the singular skill with which director Richard Wallace has highlighted the significant climaxes, The Fallen Sparrow emerges as one of the uncommon and provocatively handled melodramas of recent months….What lifts the film above the merely far-fetched and macabre is largely the skill with which Director Wallace has used both soundtrack and camera to suggest the stresses upon the volunteer's fear-drenched mind.

A street lamp shining through a fire escape throws a lattice across a sweating face; in a shadowy room, the remembered footsteps mingle with the tinkle of a bell and become the sound of dripping water from a leaking faucet.

And again, when the climax is being quietly prepared at a refugee gathering in a mansion, the strident strains and swirling skirts of a gypsy dance brush momentarily across the silence between the warring opponents.Through these scenes and others Mr. Garfield remains almost constantly convincing and without his sure and responsive performance in a difficult role Mr. Wallace's effects would have been lost entirely.