The Stranger | |
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Theatrical release poster
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Directed by | Orson Welles |
Produced by | Sam Spiegel |
Screenplay by |
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Story by | Victor Trivas |
Starring |
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Music by | Bronisław Kaper |
Cinematography | Russell Metty |
Production
company |
International Pictures
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Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
Release date
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Running time
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95 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $1.034 million |
Box office | $3.216 million 931,868 admissions (France) |
The Stranger is a 1946 American film noir starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, and Orson Welles. It was Welles's third completed feature film as director. A drama about a war crimes investigator who tracks a high-ranking Nazi fugitive to a New England town, it is the first Hollywood film to present documentary footage of the Holocaust. The original story by Victor Trivas was nominated for an Academy Award. The film entered the public domain when its copyright was not renewed.
In 1946, Mr. Wilson (Edward G. Robinson) of the United Nations War Crimes Commission is hunting for Nazi fugitive Franz Kindler (Orson Welles), a war criminal who has erased all evidence which might identify him, with no clue left to his identity except "a hobby that almost amounts to a mania—clocks."
Wilson releases Kindler's former associate Meinike (Konstantin Shayne), hoping the man will lead him to Kindler. Wilson follows Meinike to the United States, to the town of Harper, Connecticut, but loses him before he meets with Kindler. Kindler has assumed a new identity and is known locally as "Charles Rankin," and has become a prep school teacher. He has married Mary Longstreet (Loretta Young), daughter of Supreme Court Justice Adam Longstreet (Philip Merivale), and is involved in repairing the town's 300-year-old Habrecht-style clock mechanism with religious automata that crowns the belfry of a church in the town square.