The Stranger (1946) We well know that everyone in the world has laid eyes on the DVD of this movie........someone forgot to renew the copyright. Falling into Public Domain, every video supplier had the legal right to duplicate the film and sell copies......
Which is why you've seen a hundred different DVD versions sitting in Dollar Store bins all over the civilized world........
Granted, most Public Domain stuff consists of ancient cobwebbed movies that were never much good to begin with. But look closer and you can strike gold in them thar P.D. hills......(the Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn "Charade", almost all of Hitchcock's early output.....)
And of course, this little gem.......in which a young Orson Welles applied his formidable acting and directing skills to a breathless, crowd-pleasing thriller......one of his few movies that became a box office success.
Welles, however, disdained and dismissed the film through the rest of his checkered career. He never intended to chase box office dollars......he chased money only to finance personal films that could be made on his own terms with no studio interference.
But "The Stranger" still holds up, in the BQ's humble opinion, as one of the best 1940's imitation-Hitchcock thrillers we've ever enjoyed. In many ways, you can consider it as Welles' variation on 1943's "Shadow Of A Doubt", in its instantly compelling story of a picture-postcard American town infiltrated by unfathomable evil.
Nazi war criminal Franz Kindler (Welles) cleverly hides in plain sight, posing as New England college professor Charles Rankin, revered by his students and on the verge of marrying the beautiful daughter (Loretta Young) of a Supreme Court justice.
Hot on his trail comes 'Mr. Wilson' (the always dangerously intense Edward G. Robinson), a War Crimes Commission investigator The relentless Wilson sniffs out Kindler by intentionally freeing one of Kindler's imprisoned minions, using him as an unwitting bloodhound, knowing the little creep will head directly for his master......
And now the real fun begins........realizing he's been hunted down at last, feeling the ground burning up beneath his feet, the feverishly terrified Rankin/Kindler strangles the minion to maintain his cover. To no avail, however........he soon finds his crimes exposed and his identity unraveled, to the everlasting horror of his young bride. (Somewhat different from Hitchcock, Welles encourages over-the-top performances right from the start to pump up the melodrama.......a virtual acting symphony comprised of Robinson's snarling, righteous anger, Young's shrieking hysteria and many close-ups of Welles' own panic-bulged eyes.)
The whipped cream topping on this suspenseful dessert comes from the small town Americana setting.......a town presided over by the corpulent, garrulous drugstore owner Mr. Potter (Billy House, stealing every scene he's in)......a character who'd be right at home in either "Shadow Of A Doubt", "The Trouble With Harry", or even Bodega Bay in
"The Birds."
In case anyone forgot about Welles' talent as a supreme visualist, he properly finishes the film with a glorious, Hitchcockian set-piece at the top of the town's historic ornamental clock tower. Kindler/Rankin, a clock enthusiast, has only just recently repaired the mechanism, which sends life-sized, medieval, sword-wielding statues on a circular roll around the tower.
A ridiculous and blatantly inevitable finale ensues.......but we wouldn't have it any other way. In violent abandon, it's almost an equal to the carousel catastrophe of "Strangers On A Train".
All hardcore movie buffs should own their own copy of this one........and anywhere you find it, it shouldn't cost you more than a buck or two......5 stars (*****), an all-time BQ FIND OF FINDS......you never want to miss seeing Orson discover how time flies.....
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