HOUSE OF STRANGERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 535, 23 September 1949, Page 15

HOUSE OF STRANGERS

(20th Century-Fox) HIS is a grim and violent little picture of domestic savagery in New York’s East Side which succeeds rather well in establishing an authentic period atmosphere (the story is set in the hectic days of the speakeasy era), and which contains some well polished acting by Edward G. Robinson, Richard Conte, and one Luther Adler whom I do not recall having noticed before, Robinson plays the part of a smalltime Italian banker who has (as they say in those parts) come up the hard way, but has not acquired any knowledge of accountancy en route. From the story’s opening the family is divided, On es one hand is the despotic father and he favourite son (Conte), who has escaped the impact of that despotism by becoming a tough young attorney; against them are ranged the three other brothers, all under the old man’s thumb in the family business, and all hating him as cordially as they fear him, Their chance comes when the State investigates father’s bank, Conte defends the old man, but tries to make sure of the verdict by suborning a member of the jury. The elder brother (Adler) informs the police and Conte gets a seven-year stretch in jail. Meanwhile the other sons take over the business, father dies of frustration, and Conte swears vengeance. Up to that point the film is quite a satisfying study in black ‘and white, but thereafter it gets rather purple at the edges. You may, of course, feel (and not unreasonably) that New York in the ’thirties was melodramatic enough, in which case the purple patches won’t seem so much out of place.