The Stranger

Orson Welles had a box office success with 1946's THE STRANGER, though maybe not so unsurprisingly he counts it as the least among his ouevre. The auteur spent his career fighting Hollywood, adding to the curse that surely would follow anyone who had a movie like CITIZEN KANE as their debut.  Welles was very honest about himself, not concerned with storytelling or plot driving, the things that many American audiences crave, and how they judge a movie's success, to this day.  But here was a man with a European sensibility helming a thriller cum film noir, with crafty heroes and villains and an inevitable finale in a colorful location.  Poised to be edited with razor sharp precision for maximum impact.  Welles joked that editor Ernest J. Nims cut everything that didn't move the story along - the things the director felt he did best.

Charles Rankin (Welles) is a prep school teacher admired by students and faculty and about to marry Mary (Loretta Young) the daughter of a Supreme Court Justice.  Why is a short, mysterious German named Meinike (Konstantin Shayne) signaling Rankin in the woods behind the school? We learn within seconds that Rankin is a Nazi disguised in Burberry, removed from a heinous past of war atrocities.  Mr. Wilson (Edward G. Robinson) follows Meinike to the quaint town of Harper, Connecticut, certain he will eventually snuff out the Man Formerly Known as Franz Kindler, an individual with a fascination with clocks.  He has a job of it convincing Mary, even after he shows her some 16mm of Nazi genocide.  There is a clock tower in the town square.....

Whatever the behind the scenes drama, THE STRANGER is a film worthy of Welles' resume.  Even if Nims excised the first sixteen pages of the screenplay (which had uncredited contributions by Welles and John Huston, the original director).  The director's eye is in evidence, and with Russell Metty's cinematography he creates at least a few iconic moments. Great use of shadow.  The film works as detective potboiler, melodrama, and political thriller in a compact ninety minutes, even if Welles intended it to be much longer, with grimmer and more expository scenes.  A more serious exercise of human depravity.

Some have criticized Welles' somewhat boyish, ineffectual performance but it seemed to be appropriate.  Young, always photographed from the side, was fine too.  But Robinson is a jewel, so entertaining to watch and listen to.  Billy House, as shop keeper Mr. Potter, forever up for a game of checkers, almost steals the picture from everybody.