Dating tip: don't date Nazis.
"The German sees himself as the innocent victim of world envy and hatred, conspired against, set upon by inferior peoples, inferior nations. He cannot admit to error, much less to wrongdoing, not the German. We chose to ignore Ethiopia and Spain, but we learned from our own casualty list the price of looking the other way. Men of truth everywhere have come to know for whom the bell tolled, but not the German. No! He still follows his warrior gods marching to Wagnerian strains, his eyes still fixed upon the fiery sword of Siegfried, and he knows subterranean meeting places that you don't believe in. The German's dream world comes alive when he takes his place in shining armor beneath the banners of the Teutonic knights. Mankind is waiting for the Messiah, but for the German, the Messiah is not the Prince of Peace. No, he's... another Barbarossa... another Hitler."
—Franz Kindler, alias Charles Rankin
The Stranger is a 1946 Film Noir directed by Orson Welles, starring Welles, Edward G. Robinson, and Loretta Young.
Mr. Wilson (Robinson) is a war crimes investigator who has followed a Nazi war criminal, Konrad Meinike, to Harper, Connecticut. Wilson is hoping to find Meinike's old commander, Franz Kindler, a notorious Nazi criminal and perpetrator of the Holocaust. Meinike escapes Wilson and meets Kindler (Welles), who has assumed the false identity of "Charles Rankin" and is teaching at a prep school in Harper. Kindler kills Meinike and thinks he is safe, but Wilson is still on the case and soon sniffs Kindler out. Mary (Young), who just got married to the charming "Charles Rankin", refuses to believe that her husband is an escaped Nazi, and tries to help him, until Kindler makes a serious mistake.
Welles, who had made something of a bad name for himself in Hollywood by this point, offered to direct The Stranger just to show he could produce a regular studio feature on time and under budget. While this film is not as well remembered as some of his other, more artistic efforts, at the time it was the highest-grossing film he ever made. It's also notable as the first Hollywood film to show actual documentary footage of a liberated Nazi death camp, including a brief shot of a massive pile of dead Holocaust victims.
No relation to the novel by Albert Camus or the 2022 Australian crime film.
The film is in the public domain, and can be viewed in multiple places online, as well as through many DVD and Blu-ray releases. MGM owns the elements though, and Olive Films worked with them to release an "official" DVD and Blu-ray.
This film exhibits the following tropes:
- All Germans Are Nazis: Kindler, pretending to be the anti-fascist "Charles Rankin", claims that the desire for authoritarian leadership is inherent in the German mentality and uses this as an argument for the complete destruction of the German nation and culture — which, ironically, makes him sound just like the Nazi he actually is. When another person challenges his opinion by pointing out that Germany also produced great democratic thinkers like Karl Marx, Kindler argues that Marx wasn't German, but a Jew, thereby giving himself away to Wilson (since only a Nazi would deny Marx being German because of his Jewish heritage).
- Anti-Hero: Mr. Wilson openly calls himself "cold-blooded" and his methods reflect that, but he's still a Nazi Hunter.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: An escalating case with Kindler. First he just insists on penning up Mary's dog Red. Later he kicks Red and poisons him, albeit to cover up his murder of Meinike.
- Catapult Nightmare: This happens to Wilson as he realizes that Rankin is Kindler.
- Chiaroscuro: Several artfully lit scenes in shadowy places, such as when Kindler tells a cover story to Mary inside the church.
- Cigarette of Anxiety: Mary needs one after waking up from a nightmare of the weird little man (Meinike) who visited her.
- Clock Tower: Kindler, a clock enthusiast, is fixing the clock in Harper's clock tower. It's the setting for the climax.
- Death by Irony: Franz ends up impaled on the sword of an automaton activated by the clock that he himself repaired earlier.
- Disney Villain Death: Kindler falls from the clock tower, but not before he's speared by the sword of the angel that spins around the clock.
- Dramatic Irony: "In Harper, there's nothing to be afraid of" says Mary, who's married to a Nazi.
- Epic Tracking Shot: The meeting between Kindler and Meinike is a four-minute scene done without a cut, following them as they meet on a dirt trail and walk into the woods.
- Fainting: Mary faints after finding out that her brother, whom she thought had been killed in Kindler's trap, is still alive.
- Fake Faint: Sara simulates a stroke, so that Mary stays with her instead of going to the clock tower and falling into the trap set by Franz.
- Final Solution:
- Kindler is revealed to have been one of the architects of the Holocaust. The Stranger also shows actual footage of the concentration camps and was one of the first fictional films to do so. Welles stated later, that film-makers must take every opportunity they get to show this footage.Orson Welles: No, you must not miss the newsreels. They make a point this week no man can miss: The war has strewn the world with corpses, none of them very nice to look at. The thought of death is never pretty but the newsreels testify to the fact of quite another sort of death, quite another level of decay. This is a putrefaction of the soul, a perfect spiritual garbage. For some years now we have been calling it Fascism. The stench is unendurable.
- Even while pretending to be an American intellectual staunchly opposed to fascism, Kindler's Nazi beliefs shine through when, during a discussion about how to deal with post-war Germany, he claims that Germans are inherently drawn to authoritarianism and advocates for a "Carthaginian peace" to ensure that they'll never be able to threaten the world again.
- Kindler is revealed to have been one of the architects of the Holocaust. The Stranger also shows actual footage of the concentration camps and was one of the first fictional films to do so. Welles stated later, that film-makers must take every opportunity they get to show this footage.
- Godzilla Threshold: Wilson's colleagues in the Wars Crimes Commission are appalled at his plan to let Meinike walk out of jail free. He retorts that it's a necessary evil he must commit in order to catch one of the architects of the Holocaust.
- Guns Are Worthless: When Mary goes to confront Rankin in the clocktower, she misses several times and with the last bullet, gives him Only a Flesh Wound in the arm. Justified, because she probably has little experience using a gun.
- Have You Told Anyone Else?: "No one else followed you?" asks Kindler, after Meinike tells him that the man who was following Meinike is dead. Go on and guess what happens to Meinike after he answers "No."
- Heel–Face Door-Slam: Meinike finds religion during his time in jail and decides to dedicate the rest of his life to atoning for his participation in the Holocaust. Before he makes any real progress on this goal he gets done in by his old boss Kindler, who decides that He Knows Too Much.
- Heel–Faith Turn: Meinike has found religion following the war, and wants to atone for his crimes during his time under Kindler's command, namely by trying to save Kindler's soul too. He fails, as Kindler/Rankin will have none of it.
- He Knows Too Much: Kindler does away with Meinike for this reason, as Meinike is the only person still alive who knows what he looks like. He also tries to kill Mary for the same reason, becoming concerned that she may accidentally give away his involvement in Meinike's disappearance.
- Hitler Cam: Welles popularized this shot with Citizen Kane and uses it here, as in the scene where the maid is being quizzed by Wilson and Mary's father.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Kindler/Rankin ends up being impaled on the clock tower that he has spent much of the film restoring, and where he tried to kill Mary.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Franz ends up impaled on the sword of an automaton activated by the tower clock.
- Just Following Orders: "I followed orders," says Kindler at the climax, to which Wilson responds "You gave the orders!"
- Kick the Dog: A literal example, as Kindler kicks Mary's dog to stop it from digging up Meinike's corpse before locking it in the basement overnight and finally poisoning it.
- Match Cut: From Kindler kicking Mary's dog (which was digging up Meinike's body) to Wilson waking up from his Catapult Nightmare.
- Never My Fault: Kindler tries deflect blame more than once:
- After he sets a trap for Mary at the church, he is upset when Mary tells him that she sent Noah to the church in her place. Kindler tells her that Noah's blood will be on Mary's hands and that it was her meddling that caused Noah's death, even though Mary had no idea there was any danger, and in fact the trap was intended to kill her.
- When confronted about his atrocities during the war, Kindler claims he was just following orders, a common defense used by Nazis. Wilson rebuts this, reminding Kindler that he was the one giving the orders.
- No OSHA Compliance: The church's clock tower is a deathtrap, with the main access to the clock mechanism being a rickety ladder.
- Old Retainer: Sara has served Mary for a very long time and is attached to her employer. She does everything she can, up to simulating a stroke, to prevent Mary from falling into the trap set by Franz.
- Out-of-Character Alert: A casual discussion of the German character turns to Karl Marx, which leads the ostensibly anti-Nazi Rankin to respond by saying, "But Marx wasn't a German; Marx was a Jew." This causes Wilson to realize that "Charles Rankin" is in fact the man he's been hunting.
- Redemption Equals Death: Meinike has found religion, recoils in horror at Kindler's talk of another war, and asks Kindler to pray with him. Kindler strangles him.
- The Remnant: Kindler fancies himself as this, imagining "the day we strike again."
- Saying Too Much: Kindler, when someone mentions Karl Marx being German, can't help but reply "Marx wasn't German, he was a Jew", leading Wilson to realize that he's a Nazi.
- Take That!: Welles settled on the name Charles Rankin for the fugitive Nazi villain due to his dislike of the infamous white supremacist politician John E. Rankin.
- Trick-and-Follow Ploy: Wilson decides to release Meinike, a Nazi, so that he leads him to Franz Kindler, an important war criminal.
- Villain Opening Scene: The film opens with a sequence showing Meinike's flight to America and escape from Wilson.
