The Stranger (1946) directed by Orson Welles

121 Cassidy Point Drive,Portland ME 04102

10 May, 2023

Description

The Stranger is a 1946 American thriller film noir directed and co-written by Orson Welles, starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Orson Welles. Welles's third completed feature film as director and his first film noir, it centers on a war crimes investigator tracking a high-ranking Nazi fugitive to a Connecticut town. It is the first Hollywood film to present documentary footage of the Holocaust. The film was nominated for the Golden Lion (then-called the ‘Grand International Prize’) at the 8th Venice International Film Festival. Screenwriter Victor Trivas received an Oscar nomination for Best Story. The Stranger brings home the enduring theme of noir: the devastation that the second world war wreaked on the American psyche, and the silent nastiness that proliferated behind the white picket fence. (Nothing new, of course, if you were African American or First Nation.) Unearthing a war criminal as he marries into the family of a supreme court justice is a fairly uncomplicated deployment of the motif – but in these dislocated times it’s a reminder that once the American establishment took exception to Nazis.