Orson Welles tried for many years to get Hollywood financing for his films but proved unsuccessful, considering the omen following the disastrous reception for his beloved 1942 film "The Magnificent Ambersons." "The Stranger" was his first and only attempt at making a commercial film - if the film had been a success, it might have helped his career but the film flopped. It is a strangely disappointing film that, at its worst, is impersonal and cold-hearted. Even Welles called it "the worst film of my career."
Orson Welles takes the title role as a Harper, Connecticut schoolteacher named Charles Rankin, who is in fact an ex-Nazi war criminal named Franz Kindler. Rankin is hiding out in a town where nobody would expect to find a Nazi, especially during the late 1940's. Another Nazi criminal, Meinike, is released from prison and comes to visit Kindler. Of course, a war criminal investigator (Edward G. Robinson) follows Meinike to Connecticut and what was once a tranquil town becomes fraught with danger.
"The Stranger" is the kind of picture Hitchcock was known for, having all the necessary suspense and thriller elements in place. We know from the start that Rankin is a Nazi and that he is married to an innocent American girl (Loretta Young) and this invariably creates an atmosphere of tension - too bad Welles doesn't follow through with it. The faults lie with the numerous loose ends and all too neat-wrap trivializing the intriguing premise (the producers had forced Welles to make several cuts). For instance, how could Kindler's American wife be so forgiving when Kindler confesses to being an ex-Nazi? It doesn't help that Loretta Young as the wife overacts and her pitiful crying and pleas render her unsympathetic. Of course, the investigator realizes from the start that Rankin is Kindler, so why doesn't he have him arrested? After all, the police find Meinike's body in the woods (Rankin kills him in a chilling scene), Loretta's dog is killed by Rankin, etc - all this occurs i! ! n the first act. Plus, there isn't a single character whom we can identify with (excluding Robinson's) because nothing believable or plausible happens to any single person in this movie.
There are, however, some fine performances in this muddled mess. Welles plays one of his best villainous roles, and he plays it fairly straight with an icy interior and exterior - only a quiver of a smile hints at any semblance of humanity. Edward G. Robinson is wonderfully restrained as the investigator, and there's ample comic relief by Billy House as Potter, a checkers-playing owner of a drugstore. Only Loretta Young is pathetic to watch and she sinks the movie in the last half-hour with her incessant whimpering and melodramatic panting.
"The Stranger" has some tour-de-force tracking shots through the woods of this amicable town, and there is a recurring emblematic use of shadows to build tension. Once Young enters the picture, though, all credibility goes out the window, and the film is so sloppily edited that the plot structure collapses. "The Stranger" is a flawed, suspenseless, campy thriller seemingly atypical of Welles's forte. See the far superior "Saboteur" and "Sabotage."
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