The Stranger (1946)

"Well, who but a Nazi would deny that Karl Marx was a German because he was a Jew?" The Stranger is probably most famous for being the only time Orson Welles ever sold out to the mainstream. In this post-war thriller, Edward G. Robinson plays a detective working for an Allied Commission tasked with prosecuting war criminals. He is on the hunt for the mysterious Franz Kindler, the architect of the Nazi death camps. His search leads him to a small Connecticut town where Kindler has settled under the alias of Professor Renkin, a teacher at the local boy's high school. To top it off, he even marries the daughter of a supreme court justice. But Robinson knows better, and soon the game is afoot. This may not be one of Welles' most well-known or daring films, but there is something very satisfying about it. Very much in the strain of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, The Stranger also anticipates later entries in the small-town evil subgenre like The Night of the Hunter and Blue Velvet. And along with Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, and F for Fake, this is Welles best constructed film. I actually feels like a finished product! And it is gothic, but not as overly flashy and baroque as some of his other works; he does a great job of conjuring up that all-American small town feel in a way that even reminds me of my own Pelham. Robinson is perfect as always, and provides a nice balance for Welles' tendency to ham it up at times. Fun flick, definitely worth checking out.