Director: Orson Welles
A standard cat-and-mouse chase directed by Orson Welles, The Stranger plays like a remake of Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, with a charming stranger in small town Americana being pursued by the one person who suspects his true identity. Welles himself admitted that he made the picture to prove that he could direct a typical Hollywood production, though that is not to say that the result isn’t of any interest. Edward G. Robinson, playing an agent for the United Nations War Crimes Commission, hunts for Nazi fugitive, Welles, in the small town of Harper, Connecticut. In the picture’s most memorable moment, Robinson sits down Loretta Young – Welles’ unsuspecting wife – to watch real footage taken at concentration camps. Welles did not believe that Fascism could be completely eradicated in the fallout of the second World War, and, as a result, the picture involves many speeches about just that. In showing the footage, he doesn’t only stress the horrors to the American public by quite literally invading their entertainment with it, but he suggests the criminality of forgetting that such catastrophes have occurred. As to be expected, Welles brings some nice touches – including a motif of challenging the local, all-knowing cafe owner to Checkers – and, while much of the proceedings are solid if unspectacular, his climax is a terrific set piece driven by gripping suspense and concluding with a particularly gruesome death.
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