User Reviews

Any Orson Welles film is worth taking a look. It will surprise the viewer in many ways because of Mr Wells' keen sense of cinematic eye. The only thing bad with this movie is the fact that Orson Welles didn't adapt it for the screen. As a result, it suffers in many logical aspects, but doesn't detract from the over all enjoyment of the movie.

Mr. Welles' legacy is a treasure for the movie loving public. He was indeed a man ahead of his time. "The Stranger" wasn't one of his best films, but it has its rewards in the great cinematography, the acting by the magnificent cast assembled for this picture.

From the beginning we get to know who the real bad guy is. The story builds suspense as it goes along. The film is never boring and doesn't feel outdated at all. The last scenes at the clock tower are pure Welles. The interior of the clock tower scenes couldn't have been conceived by no other than Mr. Welles himself. The ending is amazing, to say the least.

Loretta Young, as Mary, the young bride is perfect for the part. Edward G. Robinson plays the war criminal hunter, Mr. Wilson. He is always effective, no matter what film he is in. Mr. Welles, is very intense as Dr. Rankin. Even the minor roles played by Billy House, Richard Long and Martha Wentworth are perfectly conceived and acted.

For fans of Orson Welles to enjoy.

Peter Cowie's THE CINEMA OF ORSON WELLES does not say much in favor of this film. He felt it was a minor work, and in a sense it is. Welles, having failed in Hollywood terms to produce a blockbuster box office success with KANE, AMBERSONS, and IT'S ALL TRUE, had demonstrated more success as a film actor (JANE EYRE in the 1940s) than as a director. He wanted to show he was able to create a successful film at the box office, and so he agreed to direct this small thriller. But it lacks the depth of the major films of his career, and so Cowie is correct to label it minor.

That does not mean it isn't interesting. Welles was the one of the first directors to tackle the issue of missing Nazi war criminals. The same year as THE STRANGER Hitchcock was filming NOTORIOUS and Charles Vidor did GILDA. All three tackled the plight of fleeing Nazis. NOTORIOUS is about Nazi and Nazi sympathizers led by Claude Rains (as Alex Sebastian) in Rio De Janairo, who are plotting some deviltry involving uranium (Hitch's "MacGuffin"). GILDA's complicated plot deals with George Macready (as Balin Munsen) double crossing German industrialists who trusted him with contracts and papers giving the owner title to their tungsten interests in Argentina. THE STRANGER deals with the search by Wilson, a government agent, for one Franz Kindler, a leading Nazi, who has fled first to Latin America, and then to the United States. It turns out that the devious and clever Kindler has wormed his way into a marriage to the daughter of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Longstreet. In each case, as you see, the fact that the Reich has fallen does not mean the danger is over - the Nazis are planning a come-back.

It has been noted that Welles based Kindler on the character of Martin Bormann, the missing deputy to Hitler and leading adviser in his inner circle. Bormann had back stabbed his way to power at the expense of his predecessor Rudolf Hess. Hess had been showing signs of cracking up by 1941(that Bormann fully took advantage of) and then flew to England in a mad attempt to settle the war there before the invasion of Russia. However, Bormann (unlike Kindler) was not the creator of the "final solution" in the movie - that was Bormann's rival Reinhard Heydrich. Heydrich had been assassinated in 1942, so he was dead and buried years before the war's end and the Nuremburg Trials (where Bormann was found guilty and condemned to death in absentia). I might add another missing Nazi leader is in everyone's mind - Welles has Konrad Meinike (Kindler's assistant) tell people he is on a mission from "the all highest". The deranged Meinike means God, but everyone (including Kindler) thinks he means the seemingly indestructible and missing Adolf Hitler. Details from Soviet archives proving Hitler's suicide were not published until the 1980s.

The film follows the efforts of Wilson in tracking down the missing Kindler. He allows Meinike to get out of prison (he was facing a death sentence) to follow him. Meinike does lead Wilson through Latin America to a town in Connecticut where Kindler is hiding as Charles Rankin, a history teacher in a prep school (where the sons of the nation's elite are groomed for their paths to leadership). Although it is barely commented on in the movie, Kindler/Rankin is in a lovely position to influence the future leaders of the country - to indoctrinate them into neo-Nazis theories. He is laying a groundwork to protect himself, but to continue the Nazi theories. In one scene he mentions the need to destroy the Germans because of their habitual warlike natures. But he retains a dislike of Jews (in the scene mentioned above, he insists Karl Marx is a Jew not a German).

The film has been cut by nearly half an hour. This was the start of the film which dealt with Meinike's "escape" and his journey (followed by Wilson) to and through Latin America. We see the conclusion, when he confronts a photographer who knows where Kindler is hiding. But the missing footage would have been very good to watch - it was a double build up to revealing that the evil Kindler was still alive, but also to lead to the irony of the insane Meinike's seeking out his missing boss to convert him to Christianity, only to be murdered by him. The sequence of the killing of Meinike is a great set piece, and one wishes the missing footage were still available because it would be a fine, ironic conclusion. One can here, as in the slashed up AMBERSONS, see what Welles' concept was meant to be, and what the audience was left with.

The individual portions of the film are quite good, in particular the bits with Billy House as Mr. Potter, and the paper chase sequence. The finale is good too. Kindler is a fanatic about clocks, repairing them whenever he needs recreation. The town's Gothic church has a broken medieval clock with figures. Kindler manages to repair it so the figures move. In the end of the film he is hiding in the tower, and comments on watching the townspeople searching for him - they look like ants to him, as he feels like God (his conversation here sounds very like that of Welles' signature bad guy role, Harry Lime in THE THIRD MAN made four years later - Lime also looks at the "ants" from the ferris wheel in Vienna). When confronted by Mary Longstreet Rankin (Charles bewildered and angry wife played by Loretta Young) and Wilson, Rankin gets killed by the clock figures. It was to be expected, and it is one bang - up conclusion to the film.

The Stranger is a solid thriller about a detective (Edward G. Robinson) trying to catch Nazi war criminal Kindler (Orson Welles), who, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, assumes a fake identity as a professor in a quiet American town and marries a local judge's daughter (Loretta Young).

Cinematography is unsurprisingly fine, with an interesting use of chiaroscuro and fluid camera movements, although studio interference reportedly tinkered with the movie, much to Welles' annoyance. The two leads are (also unsurprisingly) excellent, with Robinson as the keen, decent, humorous detective (reminiscent of his character in Double Indemnity) and Welles as the deceitful criminal striving to hide his secret.

I suspect one of the main reasons this entirely watchable and enjoyable thriller feels very underwhelming compared to timeless classics like Welles' own Touch of Evil, Reed's The Third Man, Wilder's Double Indemnity or Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt is the way the story is structured. After a compelling beginning, the detective guesses Kindler's real identity quite soon (and effortlessly secures the cooperation of his brother-in-law), so it becomes just a question of "when" and "how" the villain will be caught. And there is no particular urgency about it either.

Meanwhile, we are left to share Kindler's unsympathetic point of view as the circle closes around him... but we are rooting against him and waiting for him to be caught! Now, it *is* possible to put the audience in a bad guy's shoes for a while (I'm thinking Psycho and Strangers on a Train, for example, or even The Talented Mr. Ripley)... but a smug, unrepentant Nazi war criminal relishing on how he has managed to fool everybody? Not so much. Only when the point of view shifts to Kindler's suddenly endangered wife - whom we at least can relate to - some tension returns.

6,5/10

Orson Welles although he had to give in to studio demands in terms of casting still managed to direct himself and the rest of his players into a pretty good man hunt thriller in The Stranger.

The cast change was to put Edward G. Robinson in the role of the hunter of fugitive Nazi Franz Kindler played by Welles. Originally Welles wanted one of his Mercury Theater players Agnes Moorehead in the part. At that time it would have been quite a blow for feminism and probably would have made The Stranger a feminist landmark. As it is Edward G. Robinson brings his own truth and conviction to the role.

Orson Welles is the fugitive Kindler who is modeled upon the then at large Martin Bormann. We never learned that Bormann had in fact been killed by the Russians who just never bothered to tell us until the early seventies. Bormann in his time was the most wanted man at least in the capitalist world.

Bormann did not originate the 'final solution' mass extermination policy for Jews and other undesirables, but like Kindler in the film and unlike some of the others of Hitler's gang, he did have a passion for anonymity. It made hunting for him that much the harder.

Another one of the Nazi small fry Konstantin Shayne is allowed to escape jail and the hangman in the hopes that he'll lead the authorities to Welles. Shayne performs on schedule and Welles is forced to kill him in order to keep his his new identity as a teacher at an exclusive prep school for America's WASP elite.

Welles has also married Loretta Young, the daughter of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice to make his entry into the elite complete. Robinson had lost Shayne's trail before he was killed, but knows his man is in that small New England town. Robinson settles down in the town posing as an antique dealer and fishes for information as to who his prey is posing as.

Welles got a very good performance out of Loretta Young in the same year she won her Oscar for The Farmer's Daughter. It does slowly dawn on her, but she refuses to believe the man she married only married her for a respectable identity. Her slow realization is what makes her performance a good one.

Others noteworthy in the cast are a young Richard Long as Young's brother who Robinson takes into his confidence early and Billy House as the storekeeper/checkers hustler.

You can see traces of Welles's technique from such earlier work like Citizen Kane. One of my favorite shots, reminiscent of the deep focus cinematography of Citizen Kane is when Welles is in House's store playing checkers. He's got a hobby, clocks, that is one key to his identity. He is fixing a clock tower in the town square and loosens the peg on a ladder needed to get to the clock. It was meant for Young who was supposed fall and break her neck, but Robinson discovers it. As Welles is playing checkers with House, you can see the tower between the two men through the window of House's store. Then the camera moves in closer as Welles's voice keeps talking at about the time he figured Young would be falling from the ladder. It was setting a careful alibi for a crime that had been foiled, but of course Welles doesn't know that yet. Pure Citizen Kane.

The Stranger doesn't compare either to Citizen Kane, but it's still a much better than average noir thriller. And the ending is really outstanding. The sword of justice does indeed find its mark.

I'm finding that I'm quite at odds with many reviewers concerning "The Stranger." They and I obviously live in different worlds.

"The Stranger" is one of the clumsiest, most obvious, most absurd movies I have ever seen -- which is made even worse by the fact that Orson Welles not only starred in it but directed it, too. This movie demands that the viewer suspend all disbelief and swallow the supposition that an extremely prominent Nazi war criminal -- who hasn't a trace of a German accent -- can somehow escape Germany, obliterate practically all evidence of his past, and get hired as a Connecticut prep school instructor, mere months after the end of the war.

There are no surprises in this movie whatsoever; we learn almost at the beginning who the bad guys and the good guys are, and we can see every plot development coming a mile away. You will marvel at the lax investigating and policing procedures, the overwrought scenery chewing of Loretta Young, and the gullibility of many of the characters, not to mention Welles's condescending portrayal of the excessively stereotypical "village folk" who populate the background of this movie.

In 1946, Bosley Crowther hit the nail on the head in his review in the New York Times: "He is just Mr. Welles, a young actor, doing a boyishly bad acting job in a role which is highly incredible—another weak feature of the film."

I give this movie a 3 out of 10 because of its entertainment value -- that is, like "Plan Nine From Outer Space," it's so bad, it's fun to watch. The noir cinematography is tricky, although quite extreme and self-conscious, and the film has value as a period piece with lots of local color that makes it a travelogue into the past.

Otherwise -- hold your noses!

No, it's not Albert Camus. It's better -- more dramatic, more visual, more bombastic -- it's Orson Welles. Welles at the time was having trouble with his reputation. He couldn't finish a movie, it dragged on forever, it cost a fortune, and so on. So he ran into difficulties raising money, as he would for the rest of his life. This was his shot at proving he could turn in a commercial success as well as anyone else. Don't know if it convinced the venture capitalists but it's an above-average tale of Edward G. Robinson uncovering the identity of Franz Kindler (Welles), one of the more atrocious of the Nazi criminals, who has hidden himself as a teacher at the elite Harper School. (The name of the prep school Welles himself attended as a child.) Welles is a respectable figure in this small New England town. When a deliberately released ex-Nazi tracks him there, with Robinson in his wake, Welles kills his old friend without a qualm and buries him in "a densely wooded area." Welles, as Kindler, even kills his wife's dog that threatens to dig up the body.

It's not a sinister/comic masterpiece like "The Third Man," though the plot conforms to a similar template. And it's certainly not "Citizen Kane." It's Welles bringing it all home. But, the thing is, he does a good job of it too. Commercial it may be, but it's unmistakably Welles. It's as if Copley had painted a portrait of Paul Revere and had added at the bottom a slogan -- "Buy Revere Copper." Welles simply can't keep himself out of the picture. There are all sorts of quirky camera angles and strange shadows and overlapping dialog. Best scene: Welles is enclosed in a phone booth. He's calling his wife and inviting her to a meeting that will result in her death without his being there. Welles whistles tunelessly, waiting for the call to go through, and on a notepad with a pencil tied to it, he sketches a clumsy swastika, then turns it into a box and crosses it out. And all the time he projects placidity, even boredom.

There are a couple of the unusual character actors that Welles liked to include in his films. Nobody is the equivalent of Dennis Weaver in "Touch of Evil." (This is a commercial effort, right?) But Mr. Potter, who runs the general store comes close. Nobody else comes close. Edward G. Robinson is fun as the war crimes investigator. Loretta Young was a name but adds nothing special. Richard Long is a disaster.

Welles gives his real identity away at dinner when he carries on about how the Germans are all into racial superiority and Siegried's sword and whatnot and, when somebody objects that Marx wasn't dictatorial, he replies that Marx wasn't a German, he was a Jew. (Why couldn't Robinson simply have vetted Welles' curriculum vitae?)

Somebody quotes Emerson's famous statement that, to someone who has committed a crime, the earth is made of glass. Emerson was into "immanent justice," meaning that even if men didn't catch you at it, God would give it to you in the neck in the form of bad luck. (That's New England for you.) Welles doesn't get it in the neck. He gets it in the abdominal cavity in a very dramatic (and commercial) climax.

The movie was made to satisfy all tastes and it gets the job done. Really worth seeing.

In 1946, Orson Welles' career was in a tailspin. His battle to get "Citizen Kane" released branded him a troublemaker in Hollywood. RKO heavily cut Welles' follow-up to Kane, "The Magnificent Ambersons," while Welles himself was in South America, directing the ill-fated documentary "It's All True" (which wouldn't see the light of day until after Welles' death). To jump-start his directorial career, Welles agreed to direct "The Stranger," a modestly enjoyable thriller that bears few of Welles' stylistic hallmarks.

Edward G. Robinson pursues the title character (Welles), who may or may not be an escaped Nazi, through a sleepy Connecticut town. Complicating matters is that Welles has charmed the town's residents, including Loretta Young, whom he marries. "The Stranger" illustrates Welles' concerns that World War II did not spell the end of fascism, and is significant for being the first Hollywood film to include actual footage from Nazi concentration camps. But by Welles' own admission, "The Stranger" was more of an attempt at profitable Hollywood product than an artistic statement. The trademark Welles style does surface in the South American prologue and the drugstore scenes, and the film achieves genuine suspense during the paper chase scene and the grand finale atop the town's clock tower.

"The Stranger" did not re-establish Welles as a force in Hollywood; he directed two more American films ("The Lady From Shanghai" and "Macbeth") before departing for Europe, where his genius was better appreciated. But "The Stranger" remains a well-paced thriller, more enjoyable when considered apart from Welles' more distinctive work.

Having recently watched (finally!) this noir classic, I'm compelled to encourage others to do the same. It's a pleasure to see a work of art like this film which displays skillful attention to detail in every frame. I know there are those who would argue that this is a hack piece for the great Welles, but the stylish look of it is beautiful, and while there may be a few plot flaws, who cares? There's murder, political intrigue, suspense, a little gore and a wronged woman not to mention a few cutesy down-home characters to boot. What more d'ya want from a thriller?

Mr. Welles functions impressively in his dual capacity as director while acting the title role (a character who is also playing a dual role come to think of it), giving a nuanced performance as escaped Nazi-in-hiding, Franz Kindler, mastermind of the genocidal Final Solution, all the while applying his directorial genius to the piece. Edward G. Robinson is wonderfully restrained as the infinitely patient and unflappable Mr. Wilson, a G-man devoted to his job of hunting down and delivering WWII criminals to justice. Viewers are led along with Mr. Wilson to find the evil Herr Kindler living incognito in a small town in New England, having insinuated himself into the lives of the unsuspecting townsfolk, most notably, the beautiful and sweet but none too bright, Mary, played by Loretta Young. Imagine this fiend lurking in an idyllic Connecticut hamlet, waiting for the day when the Reich will rise again, while in the meantime having the brass to enhance his cover by marrying the innocent young daughter of a Supreme Court Justice!

The centerpiece of the town and the film is the clock tower at the Harper School for Boys, where Kindler has assumed the guise of Professor Charles Rankin. The clock tower offers a thrilling cinematic focus as we often find ourselves in and around it, never venturing far from it, beginning with the first moment when we see it on a picture postcard, right up to the exciting conclusion when the clock itself takes on an integral anthropomorphic role in the administration of justice. Of course the image of the clock tower and its dizzying visual and symbolic possibilities has since been employed in different ways by many a filmmaker, from Hitchcock on down, though not often on a par with Welles' diabolical vision.

OK, maybe not Citizen Kane, maybe not Orson Welles' proudest moment, but GREAT STUFF.

The thing is, Orson Welles doesn't play a particularly good Nazi, never mind a German, much like he didn't play a particularly good Irishman in The Lady from Shanghai. But that was just a peculiarity with the accent; here we are asked to believe that Welles is none other than the grand mastermind behind the Nazi concentration camps, the bringing of death and destruction of millions of lives and then some. Somehow, his odd little lapses of manner and guise (including a hilarious rant about the 'final solution' at the dinner table, where he is clearly addressing himself) don't really sell this unrepentant evil - and neither does he repeated blank, stony gaze. No doubt the intention here was for a more menacing, brooding look, boiling over under the surface...but his character becomes such a caricature that you almost expect him to burst out with a 'Heil Hitler!' ala Peter Sellers. This film was known for being the first to show footage from the Holocaust on the big screen. Maybe then it might have been a big fuss only a year after the war's end; but it does not really earn the right to use this, because Welles' simply isn't believable. So instead of having a dramatic impact it feels more like a narrative cheat designed to get us to abhor Mr Wilson...and since it doesn't really show much anyway, it falls flat.

The supporting characters too, are similarly flat. Perhaps this is where Welles intended to make one of those conventional Hollywood pictures. In any case, he succeeds - the cast is given nothing to work with, and all signs point apparently to the only real conclusion that could be made from this plot. The editing is full of these obtrusive reaction shots of Welles glaring whenever he is required to do so, and the script littered with arbitrary references to the stranger in town that has a mastery for crafting clocks - a point that seems less a character trait and more just a set-up for the final climatic action sequence. This has all the hallmarks of Hitchcock, but none of the thrill. For all the dramatic flourishes of the soundtrack and oversized ominous shadows looming against the wall, there's nothing really scary about Wilson at all. In fact the best scene of the movie almost has us convinced that Mary could possess the capacity to fall as low as her husband; she ecstatically pronounces to him that she has outfoxed those who seek to tear them apart with false accusations, and the key light makes her face very white indeed, almost a ghostly terror blinded by love. But for every one of these there's three of the same when Welles clumsily draws a swastika whilst orchestrating a murder. Yes, this is hilarious. No, it isn't supposed to be.

I saw "The Stranger" (1946, B&W, 95 min) starring Orson Welles (also director), Edgar G. Robinson, Loretta Young, yesterday at the monthly showing of classic films at the KU faculty alums society (I'm an associate member). Genre: film noir, mystery, etc.

This is immediately after WW-II both in setting and time of film production. The plot has the Nazi war criminal, Kindler (Welles), responsible for many of the atrocities of the Nazi death camps, destroying any evidence that would identify him, constructing a new identity and fleeing to the US. At Wilson's (Robinson) urging, the war crimes commission releases one of Kindler's most trusted lieutenants, Meineke, hoping that he will reunite with Kindler so Kindler can be identified, captured and brought to trial. Wilson tails Meineke to a small New England town where Kindler, using forged documents, has a job as a professor of history in a small college.

The ploy partially works: Meineke establishes VERY brief contact with Kindler, who -- correctly fearing Meineke had been deliberately released in order to follow him -- quickly kills him and buries his body in the woods before Wilson can make positive identification of Kindler.

Kindler has successfully courted Mary (Loretta Young), the daughter of a US Supreme Court justice, figuring their relationship will add to his cover.

The rest of the movie deals with the cat and mouse game being played by Kindler and Wilson. IMO, the script does no favors to Loretta Young who first appears as a bright, attractive young woman but she gradually gets dumber and less psychologically realistic as the movie draws to its climactic end.

I found Welle's Kindler character quite realistic in most of his psychopathic traits and actions but not his perfect American English without the slightest trace of German accent nor in Kindler's idealization of the Nazi movement and his faith it would rise again; to my knowledge, while psychopaths/sociopaths would profess any ideal they think will serve their momentary purpose, functionally they are without any longterm ideal or faith except satisfying themselves.

The acting by Welles and Robinson was good; Loretta Young did very well with the material she was given. I'm sure I'm not the only person with a correct hunch of the exact ending by 2/3rds of the way through this film. While entertaining, it's many levels below Welles' "Citizen Kane" or "The Third Man" so I'll give it half of however many total stars your top is -- 4, 5, or 10. The 1946 NYTimes review liked it even less but many reviewers value it higher than I do.

Judge for yourself and see the movie at: http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi2903506969/