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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
THE STRANGER (1946) The Stranger is a fascinating anomaly in the Orson Welles canon. It is, at once, the director’s most financially successful at the box office (Citizen Kane reportedly never made a profit upon initial release), while somehow also being one of his more neglected/forgotten features. The film, as with several of Welles’ efforts, has been in the public domain since 1973 due to the lack of copyright renewal, presenting problems for cineastes, Welles fanatics, and discriminating DVD collectors alike. Even much later Welles efforts, such as the confounding Kafka adaptation The Trial, have fallen out of copyright, a bizarre and frustrating situation for such a monumentally renowned filmmaker. Many of Welles’s masterpieces are available in gorgeously restored editions, such as the high-watermark 2007 deluxe restoration of The Third Man, a Criterion Collection release that is now already out of print (perhaps to make way for an even more authoritative edition still to come). Others languish in bootleg purgatory in less-than-stellar states of technical integrity, a situation clearly needing to be rectified. As it is, there are now at least eight DVD editions of The Stranger, none of them entirely satisfactory in terms of quality, packaging, presentation, and/or bonus materials. As for the film itself, The Stranger mines film noir territory that Welles explored much more successfully with The Third Man and The Lady from Shanghai, although it still generally holds up as a prime example of post-war noir cinema that transcends genre conventions by not particularly being a standard policiér. Instead, it concerns Welles’s portrayal of renegade Nazi death camp commandant Franz Kindler and his secret transformation into small-town Connecticut boys’ prep school teacher Charles Rankin. He’s now about to marry Mary Longstreet (Loretta Young), the beautiful daughter of a Supreme Court justice, and is pursued by the indefatigable and obsessive Mr. Wilson (Edward G. Robinson), an agent for the United States War Crimes Commission. The opening is classic noir, all long shadows of men in fedoras and high-contrast lighting that only switches to cheerier schemes when the action moves to ideal small-town Harper, Connecticut. Welles manages to keep the suspense up utilizing a strong cast, even if Loretta Young’s naiveté now strikes us as rather over the top and the brief jocular coda tacked-on to the ending almost ruins the credibility of the previous tense 10 minutes. The Stranger is a gripping enough suspense film, but it’s by no means to be counted among Welles’s finest. Film
Chest’s new release claims to be a remastered and restored
high-definition edition, complete with a Blu-ray version and 5.1
soundtrack. At its budget price (starting at $15.99), it may be a
supreme DVD bargain, although the high-def restoration seems somewhat
uneven in image quality. Some shots look crystal clear, while others
look somewhat cloudy or muddy. The 5.1 soundtrack had noticeable rumble
and distortion at moderate listening levels, particularly at the low end
of the audio spectrum. Many Welles authorities point to MGM’s 2007 DVD
release as the most superior print of the film currently available,
although it’s just possible that this new edition trumps that one. The
problem is that we are kept in the dark as to what technicians rendered
this restoration, what original 35mm elements were utilized, and from
what sources. The distorted 5.1 audio is also troublesome. That
being said, this edition of The Stranger may remain the best
quality release until a label can pick it up again and give it the
more pristine restoration that the film clearly deserves, with a
full-length commentary and more extensive extras. As such, The
Stranger has a future Criterion Collection imprint written all over
it, if Welles fans and scholars are very lucky indeed.
Scott D. Briggs
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