The Stranger (1946)

Edward G. Robinson: Mr. Wilson

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Quotes 

• Mr. Wilson : Well, who but a Nazi would deny that Karl Marx was a German because he was a Jew?

• Mr. Wilson : In prison, in Czechoslovakia, a war criminal was awaiting execution. This was Konrad Meinike, one time executive officer for Franz Kindler. He was an obscenity on the face of the earth. The stench of burning flesh was in his clothes.

• Mr. Wilson : Look out the window. Look!

  Professor Charles Rankin : Well, that's... that's an old trick, Mr. Wilson, a very poor trick.

  Mr. Wilson : Tricks. That's all you know is tricks. I don't need any tricks! And no matter what happens to me, tricks won't do YOU any good. You're finished, Herr Franz Kindler.

• Mr. Wilson : People can't help who they fall in love with.

• [last lines] 

  Mr. Wilson : Good night Mary. Pleasant dreams.

• Mr. Wilson : There's no escape. You had a world and it closed in on you until there was only Harper. That closed in on you and there was only this room! And this room too is closing in on you.

• Professor Charles Rankin : It's not true the things they say I did. It was all their idea. I followed orders.

  Mr. Wilson : You gave the orders.

• Mr. Wilson : I'm on the Allied commission for the punishment of war criminals. Its my job to bring escaped Nazis to justice. It's that job that brought me to Harper.

  Mary Longstreet : Surely, you don't think - Mr. Wilson, I've never - I've never so much as even seen a Nazi.

  Mr. Wilson : Well, you might without you realizing it. They look like other people and - act like other people, when it's to their benefit.

• Mary Longstreet : Why do you want me to look at these horrors?

  Mr. Wilson : All this you're seeing - it's all the product of one mind. The mind of a man named: Franz Kindler.

  Mary Longstreet : Franz Kindler?

  Mr. Wilson : Yes, he was the most brilliant of the younger minds from the Nazi party. It was Kindler who conceived the theory of genocide, mass depopulation of conquered countries, so, that, regardless of who won the war, Germany would emerge the strongest nation in Western Europe - biologically speaking. Unlike Goebbels, Himmler, and the rest of them, Kindler had a passion for anonymity. The newspapers carried no picture of him. Oh, no, and just before he disappeared he destroyed every evidence that might link him to his past - down to the last fingerprint. There's no clue to the identify of Franz Kindler; except one little thing. He has a hobby that almost amounts to a mania: clocks.

• Mr. Potter : What happened?

  Mr. Wilson : V-Day in Harper.

• Mr. Wilson : Forepaw's muddy. No mud on hind. Dry leaves mixed with the mud. Red must have been digging somewhere in the woods.

  Noah Longstreet : Have you any idea what for, Mr. Wilson?

  Mr. Wilson : A body, I think. Meinike's.

• Mr. Wilson : The will to truth within your daughter is much too strong to be denied.

• Mr. Wilson : I'm not interested in proving that he isn't Charles Rankin. I'm only interested in proving that he's Franz Kindler.

• Mr. Wilson : You were right about Rankin. He's above suspicion.

• Woman at Party 1 : Do you know you're our number 1 suspect in our murder case?

  Mr. Wilson : Oh?

  Woman at Party 1 : So far, you're the only suspect.

• [first lines] 

  Mr. Wilson : Leave the cell door open. That's all there is to it. Let him escape.