| Genres: | ThrillerDramaMyst |
| Actors: | Orson Welles, Konstantin Shayne, Philip Merivale, Edward G. Robinson, Martha Wentworth, Richard Long, Loretta Young |
| Director(s): | Orson Welles |
| Year: | 1946 |
| Country: | USA |
| IMDB Rating: | 7.5 out of 10 (7196 votes) |
| Storyline | Wilson of the War Crimes Commission is seeking Franz Kindler, mastermind of the Holocaust, who has effectively erased his identity. Wilson releases Kindlers former comrade Meinike and follows him to Harper, Connecticut, where he is killed before he can identify Kindler. Now Wilsons only clue is Kindlers fascination with antique clocks but though Kindler seems secure in his new identity, he feels his past closing in. |
***SPOILERS** One of the few motion pictures, directed and stared in,by Orson Wells that actually made money for the studio that financedit. "The Stranger" was also the most disliked film that Orson Wellsever directed In him feeling that he had to make it in order to provehis bank-ability to the studios. Where at the same time compromise hisgreat artistic talents in order to make the film successful andacceptable to the movie going public; who for years felt that Wells'films were way over their heads for them to both grasps and understand.Having escaped Justice by slipping into the sleepy little Connecticuttown of Harper fugitive Nazi war criminal Franz Kindler, Orson Wells,has in less then a year become a pillar of the community. Taking thename of Charles Rankin and becoming a full-fledged history professor atthe Harper School for Boys things couldn't look better for the on thelamb Nazi war criminal. With him now about to marry Mary Longstreet,Loretta Young, who's father Adam, Philip Merivale, just happens to be aUnited States Supreme Court justice.Nazi hunter Mr. Wilson, Edward G. Robinson, working for the Allies WarCrimes Commission decides to allow one of Kindler's cohorts and fellowNazi war criminal Konrad Meinike, Konstantin Shayne, to escape fromallied custody in Germany. Mr Wilson hopes that he'll eventually leadhim to Kindler.Meinike a reformed Nazi and now replacing his fanaticism for the HitlerRegime with Christianity is a loose cannon as well as paranoid anddangerous psycho! In him feeling that Mr. Wilson is an agent of theDevil not of the US State Department. Getting to the town of HarperMeinike noticing Mr. Wilson stalking him ends up bopping Wilson overthe head, from behind, in the high school gymnasium almost cracking hisskull.This act of desperation on Meinike's part not only enrages Wilson butalerts him that the elusive Franz Kindler is somewhere holed up intown! Melinlke later finds his comrade in arms, and war crimes, FranzKindler now being the respectable Prof. Charles Rankin! Meinike gets onKindler's nerves by not only being able to identify him but hisannoying sermonizing in trying to convince him about saving his souland accepting Jesus as his Lord & Saviour! Kindler sick of Meiniketrying to convert him to Christianity shuts the gabby old nut up bystrangling him. Kindler, in hiding the evidence of his crime, thenburies Meinike in the woods where, he hoped, nobody would find him.As luck would have it Kindler's new bride's, Mary Longstreet, dog Redfound where Melinike was buried leading Kindler to poison the mutt toboth keep him quite and from sniffing up evidence. Which can very welllead him to ending up dancing at the end of a rope! All these effortsto keep the law from finally catching up with Kindler fell apart a fewdays later when he was having dinner with his wife Mary and company.One of the dinner guests just happened to be Mr. Wilson who's beenmasquerading around town as a clock expert. It's here thatKindler/Rankin showed his Nazi tendencies by innocently mentioning thatthe father of modern Communism Karl Marks was not German but in factJewish! This had an attentive Mr. Wilson suspect that Rankin was theman, Franz Kindler, he's been looking for all these months. The fact isthat Marks, an atheist, didn't consider himself either German or Jewishbut an Internationalist as well as champion of the working class!As Wilson starts to tie all the loose ends together in proving thatProf.Rankin is indeed Nazi fugitive Franz Kindler his life as well asthose of Mary and her brother Noah, Richard Long, become endangered. InKindler sinister attempting to shut them up, if they ever suspect whohe is, and keep them from exposing him to the proper, the Allies WarCrime Commission, authorities! And thus end up getting everything thathe so rightfully deserves!As the noose tightens around Kindler's neck he make a final effort toescape justice in of all places the town's church bell-tower. It wasthere the he earlier tried to murder his wife Mary and almost ended upkilling both Mr. Wilson and Noah! But this time around his long andunbroken string of luck just happened to ran out. ****SPOILER ALERT**** The spectacular final has Kindler's in a life anddeath struggle with Mr.Wilson in the church bell-tower that's some 100feet up in the air. The fight finally comes to an end with Kindler notbeing done in by Mr. Wilson but the church's cuckoo clock that he soloved and nurtured, spending all his free time with it, so much.
I was disappointed with this Orson Welles effort. The story revolvesaround the capture of a well known war criminal    . I thought theperformances from the cast were a little wooden and the script wasunbelievable. A good overall to the entire film would have benefitedboth audience and cast, it definitely lacked something. It wasn't oneof Welles better films in my opinion, he could have added a touch ofsuspense and intrigue. As it is, we have a film that goes through themotions of telling the story, which (to me) was tiresome. When youconsider the talents of Welles, Young and Robinson together you wouldthink you would have a chance to watch a pretty good film.Unfortunately this isn't the case. 5/10
THE STRANGER offers an interesting story, but it takes its time ininvolving the viewer in it after a slow start. ORSON WELLES is anex-Nazi hiding in a small Connecticut town and EDWARD G. ROBINSON isthe man hunting him down. Loretta Young is his attractive wife whoknows nothing about her husband's past.These elements are combined to make a fairly suspenseful story underOrson Welle's rather theatrical direction. He gives one of his robustover-the-top performances in the peak melodramatic moments, such as thefinal scenes where he follows his distraught wife to the clock tower,an ending foreshadowed by his fascination with clocks.Seen in a pristine print, it's a very watchable movie. Unfortunately,there are many Public Domain prints that make the film look like alow-budget production. Avoid them if you can, and you should get somesuspenseful entertainment from a good print.Performances by Loretta Young and Edward G. Robinson are excellent.
This review is from: The Stranger (Remastered Edition) 1946 (Amazon Instant Video) The Stranger is an interesting film, one of the better film noir of the era. This streaming version from Triad, described as "remastered," is crap. Check out the other reviews. The MGM version has positive reviews.
In the aftermath of the second world war, paranonia became one of the major features of American culture. There were conspiracies everywhere. While the politics of paranoia are usually associated with anti-communism, it did exist in many other forms at the time. The Stranger is one example of that paranoia.Rather than seeing communists under every bed and in every closet, there were some like Orson Wells who saw fascists. What is most remarkable is how similar the mindset and the logic is. There is always the unseen enemy within. There is always the idea of innocent american values being corrupted. There is always the idea of the foreign threat to the all-american ideal. And the idea of the secret conspiracy that aims to overthrow civilization itself. The ultimate observation being that the paranoid mindset was pervasive across American culture of that era.The film is basically a old fashioned melodrama with archtype characters. We have the ideal New England town full of ideal Americans. But in its midst is an evil foreign looking european clock tower. The symbolism isn't exactly subtile. Nothing in the film is very subtile.Our villian here is a teacher (corrupting the virtuous American young) who is marrying the pure innocent daughter (corrupting the virtues of our innocent American women) whose father is the local judge (the corruption reaches into the law and the upper class).A group of nazi-hunters tracks a low-level nazi hoping they will lead them to a upper-level nazi. The upper-level nazi turns out to be our villian living in New England. We then get to the real melodrama. Welles chews the scenery and twirls his non-existent mustache. He tries so hard to be evil that he ends up going way over the top. The low point has him poisoning a dog to cover his tracks.The film has logic problems all over the place. Welles is supposed to have been a high-ranking nazi. But yet we are told that even after having found him, there is simply no way to identify him or do anything about him. This justifies a further roll down the paranoia path. Rather than just arresting the exposed nazi criminal (which the film claims is impossible), the people around him have to be "turned". Its a very HUAC/McCarthy kind of logic that has little to do with the pursuit of nazi war criminals.The anti-communist hunters had similar problems. They could track down suspected communists. But only through the confessions of others before the committee could they positively identify them publically as communists. The logic of the film anticipates the logic of the House Unamerican Activities committee a few years later.The film also unfortunately moves into Welles' other preoccupation of that time seen sometimes in his newspaper columns. That the occupation regime in Germany in the immediate postwar period was nowhere near harsh enough. That Germans as a whole had some basic drive toward world conquest and that fascism had some ethnic component to it leading all germans inevitably toward a revival of nazism. In seeing fascism in these terms, he significantly undermines the anti-fascist message of his works and specifically undermines "the stranger". Seeing fascism as an ethnic disease rather than a political idea seems very naive and very foolish today.The film moves on to a sort of conclusion. WASP womanhood turns against nazism and saves the day only after discovering that the nazi plans to kill her as well. We get a good action sequence in the clock tower to wrap things up. But the path taken to get there is rather contrived and silly.It would have been a better film if it had stuck to a no-nonsense story of tracking down a war criminal. The whole theme of corruption, the conspiracy and the hidden enemy within doesn't add anything good. It would have also been better if (for example) Loretta Young had turned against him because he was a war criminal rather than because he was going to kill her.In terms of the other aspects of the film, it was another step down from Welles' previous work. The music is a step down. The camera work is a step down. Judged by the standards of the average second rate studio melodramas of the era, its a good film. As a work that aspires higher than that, it has lots of issues.
It is 1946 and Mr. Wilson (Edward G. Robinson) of the United Nations War Crimes Commission is hunting for Nazi fugitive Franz Kindler (Orson Welles). Kindler has effectively concealed his Nazi activities prior to his escape to the United States. He assumes a new identity, Charles Rankin, lands a job as a university professor and marries Mary Longstreet (Loretta Young), who is the daughter of Supreme Court justice Judge Adam Longstreet.Wilson releases Kindler's former associate Meinike (Konstantin Shayne) and follows him to Harper, Connecticut, but Meinike is strangled to death before he can identify Kindler. Wilson must convince Mrs. Rankin, the only person to have seen Kindler and Meinke together, that her husband is a war criminal.
One of Orson Welles' periodic attempts to prove he could be commercial, The Stranger casts him as a pillar of small town Harper, Connecticut's community, a history teacher, son-in-law of the local judge and also the local Nazi war criminal being tracked down by Edward G. Robinson's Nazi hunter (who susses Welles' true identity when he refuses to acknowledge Karl Marx as a German and dismisses him as a Jew). Robinson underplays his role well and provides a good contrast to Welles' slightly broader portrait (leaving his own wedding reception to bury a body and later doodling a swastika during a phone call), while Loretta Young goes impressively through a nervous breakdown as his unknowing wife. For the most part eschewing the more expressionistic lighting of film noir for a clean, open-air look (most of the film takes place in bright daylight), the film is in many ways similar but superior to Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt in its portrait of evil hidden in the midst of a respectable and decent community ("In Harper there's nothing to be afraid of," a character notes). It's not Welles at his very best, but it does very nicely all the same. Not so nice is the job you'll have finding a decent DVD copy: since falling into the Public Domain the film has been released by dozens of different labels in prints vary from poor to terrible. MGM's DVD release is one of the better ones, but it's not so easy to find so you might end up having to take pot luck and hope for the best with one of the many budget public domain releases.
A noir-ish thriller directed by and starring Orson Welles post-"Citizen Kane". Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young co-star. Shares a neat clock-oriented subtext with "The Third Man". The character Welles plays, a Nazi baddie named Franz Kindler, who has established a new life for himself under a new name in "Harper" (neé Hartford), Connecticut is only a step or two removed from the nefarious Harry Lime of Carol Reed's classic. That was the film in which Welles gave the great speech -- one of the film world's best -- about Switzerland and the cuckoo clock. "The Stranger" isn't quite as clever, but it's a fine film nonetheless. Somewhat reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's underrated "Shadow of a Doubt", in which Joseph Cotten played an urban killer hiding from the authorities in the deceptive safety and security of the suburbs. "The Stranger" isn't based on Albert Camus' novel; that was made into a film a few decades later by Italian director, Luchino Visconti.
Amateurish and outdated by today's moviemaking standards, although the black and white photography with dramatic lighting is, indeed impressive. The plot, however, has very serious logical flaws which renders it to the realm of the unbelievable. Perhaps worth seeing for the nuanced performance of Edward G. Robinson--who, for some odd reason, looks exactly like Charlie Chan.
This review is from: The Stranger [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray) My rating is not for the movie (which I like very much *****), but for the lack of HD quality. Although I was very much looking forward to watching this movie in the upgraded Blu-ray format, I was extremely disappointed in the picture quality. This Blu-ray version is extremely soft and overly bright, and lacks HD image depth throughout. Bottom line - because there is no noticeable upgrade in picture quality, if you already own MGM's 2007 release on DVD there is no need to purchase this Blu-ray version. Let's hope Citizen Kane & Magnificent Ambersons Blu-ray releases will be better!
I have waited many years to get a DVD copy of this after many viewings from my worn out vhs copy. This is great teaming between Welles and Robinson. The subject is good too. Viewers may also like Hitchcock's Notorius.
This review is from: The Stranger (DVD) Very Enjoyable and exciting to watch. Keeps you on the edge of your seat thru the film. A real hidden Treasure.
The Stranger 1946 is a great story of Mystery. Set after World War IIgives us how the Nazis escaped from Europe after the war. Edward G.Robinson turns in a fine performance in the movie. Mr. Robinson hadreputation of being a gangster in earlier films. This role gives us adifferent side to him.Orsen Welles Legacy in films is flawless. His directing and acting isgreat. His style of directing was ahead of the time.Richard Long is cast in this picture. Before the Big Valley series inthe 1960's. Richard Long had a very nice film career going for hisself. Unfortunately he died in 1974.The Stranger with its co-stars Loretta Young, Edward G. Robinson andOrson Welles is a great Legacy of the American Cinema. Please embracethis picture and learn from it.
Spoilers herein.Orson Welles was a visionary mystic who was often coerced into bluntactivity by dull men. This is such a case: Orson toeing the line in order tobuild cash for projects he cared about (at this time, it would have been theamazing `Othello'). Earlier in his theater career, he did similar slummingin the radio world. He was effective as, say, The Shadow, but not inspired.And when anyone who is so blessed with talent is forced to hide it theproject can be called a disaster no matter how apparently palatable itis.So I can say that this is a crying disaster. I watched it several timeslooking for the master's subversion. After all, Welles was a stranger inHollywood, at this point trying to blend in -- literally by marrying a`local' beauty. He was extremely bright, and all that brilliance was tunedto its own suppression. So one would expected some secret signs distributedthroughout that conflate him as actor with his character. Alas, there is noteven a spark of that.The 2 part DVD (with `The Trial') has a particularly uselesscommentary.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.
... it could drive the action like no 'Terminator' script canmuster. TheNazi-on-the-run character is actually given a motivation, rooted inhistoryalmost too gruesome to contemplate. To comment further would ruin it - gorent it. The few lines about motivation for conquest are almost asilluminating as a second reading of MEIN KAMPF - the one where the pointstarts becoming clear, and can scare even the jaded modern.
Loretta Young intones her provincial view of a small Connecticut town,and how everything is perfect, nothing terrible can ever happen inHarper.Orson Welles deserves credit for this underrated gem. Richard Long isNoah Longstreet and Richard Merrivale as Young's father, a SupremeCourt judge.Edward G. Robinson is the government official, tracking down formerNazi Franz Kindler. Could he be in this perfect American town?. Wellesis undercover as a local professor. He marries Mary Longstreet (LorettaYoung) but soon some terrible things start occurring in Harper. Mary'sdog, Red is missing. Then the body of a mysterious foreigner is foundin the woods.The clock plays a backdrop; Franz Kindler is an amateur clockcollector. There are several intriguing scenes, such as when Welles isdiscussing Nazis and warfare, in the context of history. This is abrilliant suspense film. 10/10.
This review is from: The Stranger (Enhanced) 1946 (DVD) You do not want to buy this Triad edition. At the current time, the best edition of this film is "The Stranger (MGM Film Noir)." I know this for a fact, because I bought the Triad edition, and it was so bad, I returned it, and ordered the MGM release instead. "The Stranger (MGM Film Noir)" was a very, very smart choice. As for this Triad edition, it looks like Triad has changed the title of this dungeon-produced rubbish from "The Stranger (Remastered)" to "The Stranger (Enhanced)." Well, it doesn't matter what they're naming it, it'll be the same rip-off it was on December 16th, when I bought it under the "remastered" affix. I fell for it because the newer release date and the high price suggested that it's one of the hi-tech transfers, with the advanced home theater in mind, implying that it'll look good on your HDTV. But when the DVD arrived, it was a sham, the claim to be "remastered" out-and-out false. Nothing has been done to it, neither "remastered" or "enhanced." It's not even a good print, aside from whatever false claim of enhancements they've made. It's a copy Triad retrieved from the public domain, possibly from a site like Internet Archive, which has a vast library of public domain media anyone can access. This print was dirty and blurry and shaky, and one of the worst DVDs I'd ever seen. The print is so degraded, it doesn't even include the studio banner at the beginning of the film. In fact, it looks EXACTLY like the copy you can download yourself -- for free -- from the aforementioned Internet Archive. Incensed by such an obviously bald-faced misrepresentation, I returned to this page to further investigate this product. Most important was the discovery of this statement in italics at the very bottom of the product description: "This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media." DVD-R recordable media are those blank DVDs you buy on a spindle at most retailers. "On demand" means that your Triad edition of "The Stranger" won't even exist until after YOU order it. That wouldn't in itself be a bad thing. But it reveals what sort of operation Triad is, that it's a small-time operation that doesn't have facilities to remaster or enhance anything. What they DO have is an internet connection they use to download stuff from public domain. And what about these 4- and 5-star reviews? Well, let's take a second look. While those "customers" are quick to slap a 4- or 5-star rating on it, none of them actually bothered to mention the image quality of this disc. That's suspicious, because the image is so degraded, any customer who bought it would be sure to note it. An explanation can be gained by clicking on the see-all-my-reviews link next to each name. What you'll see is that all of these "customers" reviewed an inordinate share of Triad releases. In other words, these positive reviews are planted by Triad itself. So what does that tell me? For one, it tells me that there are a lot of films at Internet Archive I can get for free. For another, it tells me you can't trust these positive reviews. In fact, Triad -- which has recently changed its brand in the product description for some of their DVDs to "Public Domain Flicks" -- has gone out of its way to make sure you see nothing else but their phony positive reviews. They've gotten Amazon to delete THIS review seven times now. SEVEN TIMES! I've got to give it to them, they're determined.In conclusion, I asked for -- and got -- a refund, then ordered "The Stranger (MGM Film Noir)." It's cheaper and while it doesn't claim to be remastered (or enhanced), it's been mastered directly from a studio print. And though it hasn't undergone a frame-by-frame restoration, it DOES look good on my HDTV. I was very pleased. The Triad edition is simply unacceptable, and especially at the price they're charging. Normally you'd find a product this bad in a thin cardboard sleeve and dumped in a $1 bin next to the checkout counter. If you want the copy Triad's selling, go to Internet Archive. You'll get it free. _________________________
Stranger, The (1946) *** (out of 4) Interesting but flawed thriller about a war crimes commissioner (EdwardG. Robinson) who travels to a small town to find a Nazi who is hidingamong the citizens. He eventually comes to suspect a Professor Rankin(Orson Welles) who recently married a woman (Loretta Young) who has noidea about his past. Coming after CITIZEN KANE and THE MAGNIFICENTAMBERSONS, it's easy to see why this film has pretty much beenforgotten over the years. It certainly can't stand next to the twoprevious movies but when viewed on its own the thing is prettyimpressive. I think there are a few major issues with the screenplaythat keeps this from being a masterpiece but it is a very interestingpiece for its time. Considering the war had just ended, a lot of movieswere playing it safe as they looked forward to a peaceful world withoutany need for fear. That's certainly not the goal of this movie, whichreally appears to have Welles wanting to warn everyone not to turntheir back because evil can be anywhere and it might just happen to bethe man you go to church with or the man teaching your kids. There's acertain level of paranoia running throughout this film and that's whatmakes the film so interesting to watch today. It should go withoutsaying but we get some excellent performances with Robinson leading theway as the kind Mr. Wilson. Robinson made a career out of playing toughcharacters and this here is certainly one but of a different sort. Thisis more of a thinking man's role and Robinson does a nice job with it.Young is also good in the role of the wife but I think the screenplaydoes her no favors as a lot of the film's issues can be seen in herweak character. Then we have Welles who is cold as ice and turns in agreat performance. He's certainly easy to see in the role and is socold and intelligent that you can easily believe he did all the thingshe's accused of. Philip Merivale, Richard Long and Konstantin Shayneall add nice support. There are some major flaws here including a fewlittle plot holes that seem to get overlooked by the Robinson characterbut what really kept the film from being better is Young's character.At the start of the film we're made to believe that she's a veryintelligent woman but as the movie goes along she just gets dumber anddumber. I know the film tries to make you think she's in love but to meher character just does one stupid thing after another and in many wayscomes off way too over=emotional. I think Welles could have done are-write on her character and everything would have played out better.With that said, this is still a very interesting movie for its era andone that contains plenty of suspense.
Though I saw this as a grimy, grey and poor transfer in a 'ThrillersCollection' DVD box-set, the direction, story and the characters heldit together.Lesser Orson is still premium film-noir and Edward G Robinson issteadfastly reliable as the War Commissions investigator, eschewing amixture of wisdom and downtrodden-ness. The Nazi he follows, played byKonstantin Shayne, looks and sounds the part as a guilty and scaredman. Able to identify Welles' settled schoolmaster Nazi character, heis soon bumped off by Welles.From here-on in, it's about Welles trying, with ever decreasing successto conceal his crime and his identity, especially from the prying eyesof the investigator, who uses the schoolteacher's new American bride toget close to him. This all culminates in a pre-Hitchcockian clock-towerscramble-to-the-death, that's akin to Vertigo.I rather liked the store-keeper Mr Potter (Billy House, who's also thetown clerk) and his chequers-playing tactics of getting 25c from eachand every competitor and who provides a nice, central link to all thecharacters. His easy laid back and friendly style balanced that of thearrogant Welles and inquisitive Robinson.While it could be argued that a Nazi living in the U.S would not havean American accent as Welles obviously has, all the rest are fine,including Loretta Young as the bride who radiates vulnerability andnaivety. But for me, it's Edward G Robinson's picture as like all greatdetectives, he just munches on his pipe and scans the view forwrongdoers and wrongdoings. And those looking for an array of cameratricks and directorial cleverness often associated with Welles will bedisappointed. There are a few flourishes but generally it's tight andconcise and workmanlike.
No question about it, "The Stranger" is film noir.This oppressive narrative is shrouded in what must surely be among thedarkest visual styles ever. Outdoor, sunlit scenes are few and far between.Most of the picture takes place inside the shadowy mansion of LorettaYoung's guardian, inside the town's general store, or within the nearlypitch-black church steeple, where the film climaxes in a highly dramaticmanner. This movie is noir, without a doubt.Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young--are all beyond criticismas well, giving finely tuned, subtle performance.Also standing out is a very young, understated Richard Long--proving he hadacting chops way back then. Bronislau Kaper contributes a score to rival other, more highly-regardedcomposers. There are moments in it of ethereal beauty as well as intensedrama.Yet, apart from its visual style, how is "The Stranger" noir? The answer maylie in another question: who is the hero? If it's the Welles character, thenhe is an anti-hero and it fits pretty well. However, his new wife, played byLoretta Young, finds herself in a situation most noir, when Welles confessesthe murder to her (and later plots her death as well). But Young does notseem like the main character in this tale, nor does Robinson, who is clearlya heroic figure. Perhaps what makes this one noir is the visual style incombination with character situations that complement eachother."The Stranger" is only a few short steps below "Touch of Evil" in the Wellespantheon.
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