The Stranger (1946)
A United Nations war-crimes investigator tracks a fugitive Nazi mastermind to a quiet Connecticut town, where the war criminal has reinvented himself as a prep-school teacher engaged to a judge's daughter. As the investigator closes in, the fugitive kills to protect his secret, and the chase ends atop the town's landmark clock tower.
The Stranger was Orson Welles’s bid to prove he could deliver a commercial hit after the box-office disappointments of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, and it remains the only unambiguous commercial success of his directing career. It was also among the first Hollywood films to use actual newsreel footage of Nazi concentration camps as evidence within its own story.
Background
The Stranger was Orson Welles’s attempt to prove he could direct a reliable commercial hit after the box-office disappointments of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons had strained his standing in Hollywood. It follows a United Nations war-crimes investigator who tracks a fugitive Nazi war criminal to a quiet Connecticut town, where the man has reinvented himself as a schoolteacher engaged to a judge’s daughter. Welles both directed and starred as the fugitive.
What to watch for
It was among the first Hollywood films to incorporate actual newsreel footage of Nazi concentration camps directly into its story, using real atrocity footage as evidence within the plot rather than only in a separate documentary context. Watch for the tense small-town setting, at odds with the horror the fugitive is hiding, and for the film’s climax on the town’s landmark clock tower. It remains the one unambiguous commercial success among the films Welles directed.
