The Stranger
About The Stranger
United Nations war-crimes investigator Wilson frees Konrad Meinike, hoping the man will lead him to Franz Kindler, a Nazi who loves clocks. Meinike goes to Harper, Connecticut, where Kindler is living as Charles Rankin, a prep-school teacher about to marry Mary Longstreet, daughter of a Supreme Court justice. Kindler is repairing a clock in the church tower. He strangles Meinike and buries him. Wilson grows sure after Rankin says Karl Marx could not have been a German because he was a Jew. Mary will not believe him until Wilson shows her footage of the camps. Kindler admits the killings of Meinike and of the family dog, tries to stage Mary's death, and runs to the belfry. She shoots him. A figure on the clock runs him through with a sword, and he falls.
Cast & crew
More about The Stranger
Orson Welles directed and, without credit, co-wrote the film with Anthony Veiller; John Huston also worked on the script uncredited. The story is by Victor Trivas. Sam Spiegel produced it under the name S. P. Eagle for International Pictures. RKO released it. Russell Metty photographed it and Bronisław Kaper wrote the score. It opened in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City on July 2, 1946. The budget was $1,034,000 and the box office about $3,216,000.
Themes
Background
Released a year after the German surrender, the film puts a camp commander's ideas into a Connecticut dinner, then answers them with footage shot in the camps themselves.
In film history
It is the first Hollywood feature to include documentary footage of the Holocaust, shown inside the story as evidence Mary cannot argue away.
Making
Welles took a studio chase picture and put the proof of the crime on a projector: Mary has to watch the camps before she will turn in her husband. The clock he is repairing is the weapon that kills him.
Reviews
Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, called it a bloodless, manufactured show, and wrote that Welles gave no illusion of the depraved and heartless creatures the Nazi mass-murderers were.
Look
Russell Metty shot Harper and the church tower, including the climb and the fall from the clock.
Music
Bronisław Kaper composed the score.
Preservation
The copyright was not renewed in 1973. The film is in the public domain in the United States.
Notes
- Edward G. Robinson plays Wilson, Loretta Young plays Mary, and Welles plays Kindler. Philip Merivale is Judge Longstreet. Richard Long is her brother Noah. Konstantin Shayne is Meinike.
- Billy House plays Mr. Potter, the check-playing man in the store who helps Wilson watch the town.
- It was the first Hollywood feature to cut in real documentary footage of the camps, three scenes from Nazi Concentration Camps (1945), assembled by George Stevens, James B. Donovan, and Ray Kellogg and used at Nuremberg.
- Victor Trivas was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Story. Clemence Dane won, for Vacation from Marriage.
- The film was nominated for the Grand International Prize at the 1946 Venice festival, the award later called the Golden Lion.
- The copyright, held by The Haig Corporation, was not renewed in 1973, and the film is in the public domain in the United States.
- Welles's part was his third completed feature as director, after Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons.
Scenes
- Kindler strangles Meinike in the woods after the man begs him to confess.
- Wilson runs the camp footage for Mary and tells her who her husband was.
- On the tower she shoots him. A clock figure's sword impales him, and he falls to the street.
Also available
- Internet Archive (TheStranger720p)
