The Most Deceitful Man A Woman Ever Loved !
The Stranger stars Orson Welles, Loretta Young and Edward G Robinson. Although, I think "stars" is more a matter of status as opposed to performance in this film. Sometimes, both in this movie and the way he appears to have lived, Orson Welles seemed a bit over the top. But I've often wondered if that was Welles' schtick or maybe he really was just larger than life!
Not sure what brings me back
I remember this movie from when I was a kid watching "Million Dollar Movie" early on Saturday mornings. Back then it was quite a thriller, but now, as an adult, it seems clear that Orson Welles really was overacting. Also - and this is so disappointing, Loretta Young seemed like she just mailed in her performance. Maybe Bosley was right! But really, there was some, perhaps intangible, quality about this movie that pulls me back every now and again.
Mr. Welles, a young actor, did a boyishly bad acting job
Bosley Crowther July 11, 1946: At the end Mr. Welles, puffing wildly and sweating at every pore, is impaled on a sword held by a figure atop a church—a critic, no doubt. We say that because the performance of Mr. Welles in the title role is one of the less convincing features of this film. At least, to this hopeful observer, he gave no illusion of the sort of depraved and heartless creatures that the Nazi mass-murderers were. He is just Mr. Welles, a young actor, doing a boyishly bad acting job in a role which is highly incredible—another weak feature of the film. As a matter of fact, the writing of "The Stranger," by Anthony Veiller, is the weakest thing about it—and that estimation includes another silly performance by Loretta Young as the killer's wife. (T)he whole film, produced by S. P. Eagle, comes off a bloodless, manufactured show.
Professor Charles Rankin: The German sees himself as the innocent victim of world envy and hatred, conspired against, set upon by inferior peoples, inferior nations. He cannot admit to error, much less to wrongdoing, not the German. We chose to ignore Ethiopia and Spain, but we learned from our own casualty list the price of looking the other way. Men of truth everywhere have come to know for whom the bell tolled, but not the German. No! He still follows his warrior gods marching to Wagnerian strains, his eyes still fixed upon the fiery sword of Siegfried, and he knows subterranean meeting places that you don't believe in. The German's dream world comes alive when he takes his place in shining armor beneath the banners of the Teutonic knights. Mankind is waiting for the Messiah, but for the German, the Messiah is not the Prince of Peace. No, he's... another Barbarossa... another Hitler.
WATCH IT AGAIN: Yeah if it was on and I wasn't doing anything
DO I WANT TO OWN IT?: No need it's on all the outlets
Thanks for stopping by - see ya at the movies!
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