Of the films I was tasked to review, this one is probably the most well known and widely available since passing into the public domain back in the '70s. The Stranger is a slice of post-war film noir, tapping in to the fear of Nazi fugitives planting themselves into towns and cities to bring down the American way of life.
Edward G. Robinson plays Mr. Wilson, a man tasked with tracking down a Nazi war criminal by the name of Franz Kindler. He follows his trail to Harper, a small New England town and starts to do some digging. Initially unbeknownst to him, Kindler has assumed a new identity, that of a respectable professor named Charles Rankin (Orson Welles) who is marrying Mary Longstreet (Loretta Young), daughter of the equally respectable Supreme Court Justice Adam Longstreet (Phillip Merivale). Wilson must ask around the town and find clues if he is to apprehend Kindler.
The producers originally wanted to hire Maltese Falcon director John Huston, but Huston had gone into the military by that point, so they turned to Welles, who wanted to prove to the studios that he could make a film on schedule and under budget. Welles always had problems with the studio system throughout his career and this seems to be the last point where he was willing to play their game. He signed a nasty contract that guaranteed he would give up all of his earnings (from any source, the greedy bastards) to International Pictures should he fail to fulfil his contractual obligations. Welles did his duty and the film has gone down in history as the only one of his to make money upon initial release.
The three leads are at the top of their respective games. Edward G. Robinson is gruff but likeable as Wilson, Welles is pretty creepy as Rankin/Kindler and Loretta Young is strong, but vulnerable. It's a classic cat and mouse story that is done expertly. It piles on the tension as Kindler gets increasingly desperate to cover his tracks. Welles' use of shadow and framing draws you into the story and keeps you invested in the plot. Welles hired Citizen Kane production designer Perry Ferguson to build a town square with interconnected sets to make full use of deep focus, often having the action partially obscured to force the viewer to peer that little bit closer into what's going on.
The Stranger was the first film to use documentary footage of holocaust camps to emphasise the wartime atrocities. There was a lot of denial and ignorance about death camps in post war America and Welles showed incredible bravery in showing footage originally used as evidence in the Nuremburg trials in his film. It's hard to appreciate it now, but Nazi fugitives were an incredibly prickly topic at the time and it's commendable that Welles tackled the subject head-on like this.
Many Welles fans, like Welles himself, consider The Stranger to be one of his weakest films, but I can't see it myself. It's certainly more linear and conventional than his other work, but the material is elevated by tight control of atmosphere and camera flourishes.
Outside of the main cast, I loved Billy House as Mr. Potter, the owner of the town drugstore who knows all of Harper's residents. His scenes tie the whole film together and we gain a lot of insight into the characters when they sit down to play checkers with the friendly senior.
The script is a little heavy-handed at times. When Wilson sits Mary down he describes Kindler as having basically invented genocide, which I'm sure was as patently ridiculous then as it is now. Also in the famous and otherwise well-written dinner scene, Rankin almost blowing his cover by snapping and stating that Karl Marx wasn't German, but a Jew seems completely out of character for someone who is meant to be an expert at covering his tracks.
I really enjoyed The Stranger. It's expertly directed, decently written for the most part and contains some fantastic performances. It's obviously not on the same level as Welles' previous or subsequent work, but it's an effective, suspense-filled thriller nonetheless. Highly recommended.
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