The Stranger (1946)

Finally, another true oldie! Not to mention my first Orson Welles movie in more than two years. He wasn't completely persona non grata in Hollywood yet, so he's not the only star of note here. More importantly from a historical perspective, this was his one immediate box office hit, tho Welles himself liked it least.

Franz Kindler (Welles) may have been the Nazi Party's best-kept secret, a Holocaust architect who always avoided the limelight, so the UN War Crimes Commission has little idea what to look for. Commission member Wilson (Edward G. Robinson) makes the irregular move of setting loose condemned "smaller fish" Konrad Meinike (Konstantin Shayne) and tailing him. Meinike flees to a small Connecticut town, discovers Wilson, and knocks him out before meeting Kindler, who now masquerades as seemingly American teacher Charles Rankin and will soon wed a Mary Longstreet (Loretta Young). To stop the trail cold, Kindler kills Meinike in the woods and buries him, however shallowly. When Wilson comes to, he finds his mission a little harder than he'd hoped.

By the halfway point in these 95 minutes, Wilson has figured out which local is Kindler, but he needs proof before he can enforce justice. He hopes that Mary will understand how awful her husband is (not just "was"; Kindler wants another war) and work with the heroes. Wilson even shows her the first actual concentration camp footage in mainstream U.S. movie history. Of course, this education presents another danger: Kindler loves Mary, but not so much that he wouldn't kill her if he thought it necessary for his survival. Ever-unorthodox Wilson will take that chance to expose him.

Kindler may be brilliant at committing villainy on a massive scale, but he's no Tom Ripley. He makes several major mistakes, not least in being too honest. I can believe that a real criminal might do the same; I just regret that he doesn't force the overall story to be smarter.

At times, I thought of Hitchcock, especially the same year's Notorious, what with the marriage of a good American woman and a hiding Nazi who sees fit to kill her. Unfortunately, Welles didn't quite have Hitchcock's sense of when to push things and when not to. Some moments—especially in the first act, when we're still getting our bearings—feel overly dramatized. In retrospect, TS is not as neatly edited either.

Nevertheless, I have yet to see a Welles picture I'd call hackneyed. TS manages to feel distinctive in a positive way. It has some good cinematography, and all the actors deliver. It's neither too long nor too short. I recommend catching it while it's still streaming, since the DVD is harder to find than Kindler.