The Stranger is a 1946 American thriller film noir directed and (although uncredited) co-written by Orson Welles, starring himself along with Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young. Welles's third completed feature film as director and his first film noir, it centers on war crimes investigator Wilson tracking high-ranking Nazi fugitive Franz Kindler to a Connecticut town. It was the first Hollywood film to incorporate actual documentary footage of the Holocaust.
The film was met with positive reviews from critics and was nominated for the Golden Lion (then-called the ‘Grand International Prize’) at the 8th Venice International Film Festival. Screenwriter Victor Trivas received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Story. The film entered the public domain when its copyright was not renewed.
Plot
Mr. Wilson, an agent of the United Nations War Crimes Commission, is hunting for Franz Kindler, a Nazi fugitive and war criminal. Having erased all evidence that might identify him, Kindler is only known to the UNWCC for his nearly maniacal passion for clocks.
Wilson releases Kindler's former associate Konrad Meinike, hoping the man will lead him to Kindler. He follows Meinike to the small town of Harper, Connecticut, but Meinike knocks him out cold before meeting Kindler. Kindler has assumed a new identity as "Charles Rankin", a teacher at a local prep school. He is about to marry Mary Longstreet, daughter of Supreme Court Justice Adam Longstreet, and is involved in repairing a 400-year-old Habrecht-style clock mechanism with religious automata that crowns the belfry of a church in the town square. Repentant and having become a Christian, Meinike begs Kindler to confess his own crimes. Fearing he might be exposed, Kindler strangles Meinike and buries him in the woods.
Recovering from his injury, Wilson begins investigating newcomers to Harper. While initially not suspecting Rankin, he comes to realize that Rankin must be Kindler when the latter states offhandedly that since Karl Marx was a Jew, he could not be a German. Even so, not having witnessed the meeting with Meinike, Wilson still requires proof, and only Mary knows about the meeting. To secure her admission, Wilson attempts to convince her that her husband is a criminal before Kindler decides to eliminate the threat by killing her. Kindler's facade begins to unravel when Red, the family dog, discovers Meinike's body. To further protect his secret, Kindler poisons Red.
Meanwhile, Mary grows suspicious of her husband. Kindler admits to killing Meinike and Red, but claims Meinike was in town to blackmail her and her father. Wilson shows Mary graphic footage of Nazi concentration camps and explains how Kindler developed the idea of genocide. Mary, seeking to protect Kindler, lies about Meinike but remains torn between her love and her desire for the truth. Kindler tries to arrange a fatal "accident" for Mary, but she discovers the plot. Finally accepting that Rankin is Kindler, she dares her husband to kill her to his face. Kindler's attempt is prevented by the arrival of Wilson and Mary's brother, and he escapes from the house.
Kindler flees into the church belfry, followed by Mary and then Wilson. Meanwhile the residents of Harper, hearing the repaired clock bell, arrive outside the building. At the top of the tower, Kindler pulls a gun and a struggle ensues. Mary ends up with the gun and shoots Kindler. He staggers outside to the belfry's clock face, is impaled by the sword of one of the moving clock figures, and falls to his death.
Cast
Contemporary news items about the production add uncredited and unconfirmed cast members Neal Dodd, Nancy Evans, Fred Godoy, Joseph Granby, Ruth Lee, Lillian Molieri, Gabriel Peralta, Gerald Pierce, Robert Raison, Rebel Randall, Johnny Sands, and Josephine Victor.
Production
Produced by Sam Spiegel (who then billed himself as S. P. Eagle), The Stranger was the last International Pictures production distributed by RKO Pictures. Filming took place from late September to November 21, 1945, at Samuel Goldwyn Studios and Universal Studios. The film's musical score is by Bronisław Kaper.
Spiegel initially planned to hire John Huston to direct The Stranger. When Huston entered the military, Orson Welles was given the chance to direct the film and prove himself able to make a film on schedule and under budget—something he was so eager to do that he accepted a disadvantageous contract. In September 1945, Welles and his wife Rita Hayworth signed a guarantee that Welles would owe International Pictures any of his earnings, from any source, above $50,000 a year if he did not meet his contractual obligations. He also agreed to defer to the studio in any creative dispute. The Stranger was Welles's first job as a film director in four years.
Editor Ernest J. Nims was given the power to cut any material he considered extraneous from the script before shooting began. "He was the great supercutter," Welles said, "who believed that nothing should be in a movie that did not advance the story. And since most of the good stuff in my movies doesn't advance the story at all, you can imagine what a nemesis he was to me."
For directing and acting in The Stranger, Welles was to receive $2,000 a week plus $50,000 when the film was completed, and a chance to sign a four-picture deal with International Pictures, making films of his own choosing.
Welles was given some degree of creative control. He worked on the general rewrite of the script, wrote all of the scenes in the drugstore, and wrote scenes at the beginning of the picture that were shot but subsequently cut by Spiegel and executive producer William Goetz. Welles had endeavored to personalize the film and develop a nightmarish tone. There is uncertainty about how much of this material was actually shot and how much was removed. Some scenes elaborated on Konrad Meinike (Konstantin Shayne)'s flight through Latin America, shadowed by an agent named Marvales and his wife, a woman in distinctive gold earrings who is murdered by savage dogs kept by the Nazis-in-exile. A brief vestige of the sequence remains in the final release version. In a 1982 interview, Nims said 32 pages of the script were eliminated at his suggestion, including the first 16 pages.
An early scene showing a meeting of Mary Longstreet Rankin (Loretta Young) and Charles Rankin (Welles) was filmed but removed. She finds him in the woods, looking at the incongruous 16th-century Gothic clock in the town square, and tells him it was "brought by sailing ship from the shores of the Mediterranean" by one of her ancestors. Rankin is familiar with the clock and her family's history, and as they walk through the cemetery he notes the many Longstreets who are buried there and their patriotic service.
"Character development suffers from the loss of these scenes," wrote film historian Bret Wood, who also observes that inclusion of the Latin American pursuit would have increased the sense of foreboding before the story enters the idyllic town of Harper. A sense of mystery would also have been set up by an imaginative but unrealized pre-title sequence in the Welles version; instead, the titles are simply superimposed over the image of the clock.
Welles wanted Agnes Moorehead to portray the investigator Wilson. "I thought it would be much more interesting to have a spinster lady on the heels of this Nazi," Welles said. Edward G. Robinson was cast instead.
Welles planned to use the campus of his alma mater, the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois, as the setting for The Stranger. The idea was ruled out by budget restrictions, but a few artifacts are seen in the film. A sign in the gymnasium reads "Harper vs. Todd" and refers to Clover Hall, a building on the Todd campus, and "Mrs. Collins"—Annetta Collins, teacher, housemother, and director of kitchen services. It was Collins who had recruited Welles for Todd in 1926, after meeting the boy at his father Richard's hotel in Grand Detour. A note on a blackboard, in Welles's handwriting, refers to Wallingford Hall, another building at Todd. A notice on the wall is signed "Coach Roskie"—Anthony C. Roskie, Todd's longtime athletic director.
Perry Ferguson, production designer for Citizen Kane, was borrowed from Samuel Goldwyn Productions. For Welles, Ferguson created a complete town square, an interlocking series of sets in related proximity to each other. Scenes could be filmed that provided deep views of adjacent buildings through windows or reflected in their glass, adding richness and dimension.
"When we're filming inside the drug store, we get a sense of depth that is extremely rare in a Hollywood movie," said film historian Bret Wood:
In the shot where Wilson plays checkers with Potter, you can look behind Potter and see a mirror behind him, and through the mirror see Potter and Wilson again, and then see the window behind the camera, and see through that window to cars, buildings and natural sunlight. It's truly radical. If it were deep focus the way Gregg Toland had shot Citizen Kane, maybe it would have been noticed or written about in the last 70-odd years.
The set facilitated long takes in which conversations begin indoors, move outside to actual storefronts, and continue across the town square. Welles used long takes as a way to protect the integrity of his film, giving "the great supercutter" nothing to cut away to. The long takes are so subtle that they go unnoticed. At a time when a one-minute take was a rarity, Welles presents one unbroken scene between Kindler and Meinike in the woods that is four minutes long—longer than the bravura opening of Touch of Evil (1958).
The character of Potter—a comic druggist who plays checkers—was played by actor Billy House, a burlesque star who became a particular favorite of Welles. The character was not initially a major part of the film, but Welles expanded the role as filming progressed. Feeling that these revisions came at his expense, Edward G. Robinson complained ineffectually to studio executives.
Welles recalled Loretta Young's support in a dispute with Spiegel, when the producer ordered a closeup of Young during a medium-full shot of Mary's fight with Kindler. "It would have been fatal," Welles said. "I told that to Loretta, and she said, 'Well then, we're not going to make it.'" When Spiegel continued to insist on the closeup, Young brought in her agent. "Imagine getting a star's agent in to ensure that she wouldn't get a closeup!" Welles said. "She was wonderful."
"No one who worked on the film can remember any special anecdotes or problems concerning it," wrote biographer Frank Brady. "Welles has said, since the making of The Stranger—which he completed one day before schedule and under budget—that nothing in the film was his, this despite the fact that the unmistakable Wellesian moods, shadows, acute angles, and depth-of-focus shots are pervasive. Within the film is a second film, another Wellesian touch, consisting of snatches of documentary footage showing Nazi atrocities." The Stranger was the first commercial film to use documentary footage from the Nazi concentration camps.
"What we tend to forget today is that in the 1940s a large percentage of the population could not believe that the Nazi death camps were real," said Bret Wood. Welles had seen the footage in early May 1945 in San Francisco, as a correspondent and discussion moderator at the United Nations Conference on International Organization.Display advertisement, "What America's Youngest News Network Is Doing About the Greatest News Story of Our Time". American Broadcasting Company, Inc., The Blue Network. Broadcasting, April 30, 1945, pp. 22–23 Welles wrote of the Holocaust footage in his syndicated column for the New York Post (May 7, 1945).