The Stranger's Hand () is a 1954 British-Italian thriller drama film directed by Mario Soldati and starring Trevor Howard, Alida Valli and Richard Basehart. An international co-production, it is based on the draft treatment with the same name written by Graham Greene. The plot follows the son of a British MI5 agent kidnapped in Venice by agents of Yugoslavia as he searches for his father.
Greene used a pseudonym to enter the first two chapters of The Stranger's Hand in a competition organized by the New Statesman which called for submissions in the style of Graham Greene. His entry won second prize. Soldati saw the chapters and persuaded Greene to complete the story to serve as the basis for a film. Greene expanded it to 30 pages of a "film story", and Giorgio Bassani and Guy Elmes used Greene's work as the basis for their screenplay.
In the New York Times, Bosley Crowther enjoyed the film's use of situations and themes typical of Greene, but thought Soldati allowed the story to "sag like a slack rope".
Cast Trevor Howard as Major Roger Court Richard O'Sullivan as Roger Court, his son Alida Valli as Roberta Gleukovitch Richard Basehart as Joe Hamstringer Eduardo Ciannelli as Dr. Vivaldi Arnoldo Foà as Police Commissioner Stephen Murray as the British Consul in Venice Guido Celano as the Chief Constable Nerio Bernardi as Vincenzo Giorgio Costantini as Pescovitch Angelo Cecchelin as Luza Nino Vechina as First Killer Armando Papette as Second Killer Giovanni Karuz as Third Killer Joan Butterfield as Mrs. Harrington Alessandro Paulon as Morgan Remington Olmsted as Ramondo
References
Bibliography Spicer, Andrew. Historical Dictionary of Film Noir. Scarecrow Press, 2010.
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