I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Edward G. Robinson is perfectly cast as the relentless detective, determined to capture evil Nazi War criminal Orson Welles. Loretta Young is somewhat annoying as the newlywed who seems almost hypnotized by and devoted to Welles, who reveals to her his mean spirit in almost every shared scene. Although very much "formula" and predictable, the film does have it's shining moments. Clever editing gives several key scenes very effective visual and audible transitions. The character of the ever checkers-playing town gossip/shop keeper/phramacist etc. is a delight. True to Hayes Code norms, husband and wife sleep in separate beds, and you can rest assured that "God don't like ugly", a foregone conclusion depicted quite appropriately toward the end. This film may be dated in many ways, but credit is due to Welles', for handling the gritty topic of Nazi War Crimes so soon after WWII ended and the world learned the truth about Hitler's Holocaust. This is no Double Indemnity or Citizen Kane, or even Third Man, and it certainly isn't Loretta Young's finest hour, but for fans of Classic Hollywood, "The Stranger" is still well worth a bag of pop corn and a Coke. Enjoy!

There's this myth going around that anything that's old and shot in black and white must be unquestionably good. The Stranger is a movie that debunks this idea. It has got to be one of the worst movies from the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, if not of the 20th century.The sad thing about it is that it had all the elements of being a brilliant and insightful masterpiece. Made just after the end of WW2, this was probably the first movie to anticipate the very real problem of Nazi war criminals escaping justice and trying to create a new life of normalcy in the US. In the hands of better writers and a different director, it could've been gold. Instead, it's laughably, laughably bad and unrealistic. Professor Rankin aka Franz Kindler, could've just been a low ranking Nazi official, but no; he had to practically be the mastermind behind the Final Solution and was right up there in importance as Goebbels and Himmler! (How absurd!!) And then, to make matters worse, he doesn't have one trace of any accent whatsoever. Are we to believe that a German, born and bred, who was only running the camps a year before the events in which this film took place, was able to immediately speak English fluently with a perfect mid-Atlantic American accent?Even the movie knew how stupid this was, so it tried to be slick and have Mary (Loretta Young) address Mr. Wilson in an incredulous tone, as in, "What, do all foreigners have to have an accent?" Nice try, but what a load of bull. All foreigners have accents, even ones who've been living here for decades. So many of the other plot points are stupid beyond belief. Mr. Wilson and Mary's father literally decide to put her in harm's way to catch Kindler, knowing full well that he's a mass murderer and has just killed a man days before! Mary is oddly devoted to protecting Charles, in spite of the guy repeatedly lying to her over and over again about his past. Some of the scenes are ridiculous; in one scene, Kindler is casually drawing a swastika out in a public space where everyone can see him. In another scene, the actress that plays Mary's maid, screaming and crying about her heart, chews more scenery than Nicolas Cage in Vampire's Kiss.But the worst part of this movie is Orson Welles' himself. I've always loathed him as an actor (he ruined Jane Eyre and brought no humanity to the character of Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane). The Stranger confirmed how terrible an actor he always was. He puts on this ridiculous scowl the entire time, and his mannerisms couldn't be more unnatural or ridiculous. I can't remember which scene it was (was it with the dog?), but there's a scene where he's in the forest stumbling around at the scene of the murder, and he lumbers around like the Frankenstein monster. He moved similarly in the climactic scene in Citizen Kane when Kane trashes his bedroom. He looked stupid then and looks even stupider in this scene, with his arms and legs stiffly moving around like an idiot.If there's anything positive I can say about this film it's Edward G. Robinson, who rose to occasion playing against type as an impassioned Nazi hunter. Also, the scenes in the bell tower were shot so artfully that there's no question in my mind that Hitchcock cribbed shots for Vertigo. Otherwise, this movie is just awful, laughable, junk. No wonder Welles hated it.

This movie was OK to me . Not my type of movie. A little slow but it does have a good context behind the whole thing and some good parts like the juicy details they speak upon one another in secret and great actors as well. This movie also had good lighting and camera angles as well.

When the film starts the music gives off a suspense horror movie feel. Scenes were very dark extra dark while the only light was seen on each character. I figure that the audience saw a lot of shadows. Storyline wasn't confusing it was pretty interesting to follow. The quality of this film was crisp very clear showing how cameras were changing and improving.