THE STRANGER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 443, 19 December 1947, Page 30

THE STRANGER

(International Pictures) T will be generally conceded that any film in which Orson Welles has a hand is worth seeing for that reason alone. From that proposition to one which holds that any film with Orson Welles in it must benefit from the impact of that erratic genius could be a facile step, but The Stranger leaves no room for any serious doubt about its quality. A screen story pure and simple, it is (within the narrow compass of its genre) practically without flaw. For this almost the whole credit must go to Welles, who is both director and principal actor. The fact that the story is a thoroughly orthodox and uncomplicated one about the catching of a criminal, that it moves through the routine cycle of such stories from the first tally-ho to the final encounter, and that the forces of good triumph in the end over the forces of evil, does not detract one iota from the warm feeling of satisfaction which remains once the gooseflesh has subsided. After all, Picasso could make an orange look like the sun, and though Mr. Welles may find the comparison odious it may not be too far-fetched. When the story opens Edward G. Robinson, American member of a sort of international F.B.I., has just convinced his colleagues that the only way to track down the most dangerous of the Nazi war criminals-Franz Kindler, the brain behind the genocide campaign -is to allow one of the lesser fry to escape, then shadow. him until he reaches the inevitable rendezvous. As for arrows, so for Aryans. If you lose one, you shoot another off and follow it up. The plan works and before long the lesser Nazi (Konstantin Shayne) atrives in the quiet little U.S. town of Harper. Edward G. Robinson arrives on the same bus. From that -point the show belongs entirely to Orson Welles, who will keep the most case-hardened filmgoer on the edge of his seat until the last horrible moment. All the personal touches of Welles the director are brought to the task of. building suspense almost to breaking-point -- unorthodox cameraangles, the use of shadows and foreshortened perspectives, the concentration of attention on minutiae (sticking plaster on MRobinson’s. pipe-stem, the tinkling of a drug-store cash-register), the close-ups of faces. At times I could almost hear Mr. Welles saying to Mr. Welles, "Don’t shoot till you see the whites. of my eyes." The cast is hand-picked. Robinson, as impassively batrachian as ever, plays his part faultlessly, and Loretta Young (of whom I have more than one unhappy memory) is perfectly cast as the arch criminal’s hapless wife. But in convincing you that Kindler could be a nightmare reality-wigkedness incarnate in the body of a’small town. schoolmaster ~--Welles takes the honours with arrogant ease. At only three isolated points was I unsatisfied, At one, about three lines of popular "psychology" are put into Robinson’s mouth. Then just before KindTec eniitte cries, "I acted under orders"

-such a character does not break down so easily. And I would like a horologist’s opinion on the probability of the final coup de grace.