The Stranger by Orson Welles

March 7, 2006

Since The Stranger (1946) was Orson Welles' least favorite of his own films, I was not expecting anything fantastic. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by the brisk pace and strong characters. The film also has the odd distinction of being the first commercial film to use footage from the Nazi concentrations camps. In the interviews, Bogdanovich brings this fact up, and Welles answers:

Was it? I'm against that sort of thing in principle— exploiting real misery, agony, or death for purposes of entertainment. but in that case, I do think that, every time you can get the public to look at any footage of a concentration camp, under any excuse at all, it's a step forward. People just don't want to know that those things ever happened. [189]

This concentration camp footage is relevant since the movie is about the tale end of a hunt for a secretive and powerful Nazi, who had finally taken up residence in a sleepy town called Harper in Connecticut.

The film struck me as much more Hitchcockian than anything I have yet seen from Welles. At times the investigator Wilson (Edward G. Robinson) used psychoanalysis to predict the actions of the characters, which is an approach that is taken much further in Hitchcock's Spellbound from 1945. Then the idea of hunting for an escaped Nazi criminal gets put to use by Hitchcock in Notorious, also released in 1946.

Why Hitchcock would be an attractive model for Welles can be no mystery. Hitchcock represented a director who could successfully realize his own artistic vision, yet at the same time make money for the studios. In other words, he was an auteur who could survive in the studio system.

Welles, however, seems slightly ill at ease in this kind of film. First of all, the psychological thriller is not his forte.. Welles is more Shakespearian (something I will explore later) and his characters tend to be driven by appetite and passion rather than psychological drives hidden even to themselves. Second, Hitchcock is woodenly disciplined.. famous for his story boards.. and he seems made to work within studio strictures. Welles is simply not disciplined in the same way.. and that comes through everywhere, from his interviews to his best movies.

Welles gives a brief characterization of Hitchcock in his interviews:

There's a certain icy calculation in a lot of Hitch's work that puts me off. He says he doesn't like actors, and sometimes it looks as if he doesn't like people. [138]

That is something no one would ever say about Welles. If there is anything that stands out about his work, it is how human it all is.. how it stays focused on character, without getting sidetracked by abstractions.

But there were a few moments in The Stranger that I think showcase Welles. There were those scenes with the town druggist, gossip, and champion checkers player, Mr. Potter (Billy House). Welles' love for small towns and Americana I think shines through here. Then there is the scene where Wilson comes up with a quotation from Emerson on evil.. something about the world being covered with snow for the wrong-doer.. every step being recorded in the freshly fallen snow. And of course by the time we get to the end, the snow is falling in this small Connecticut town. These are exactly the kinds of details that mark even a middling Welles film.