The Stranger (1946): watch the full film free, legally

A Nazi fugitive in Harper

The Stranger is a 1946 American thriller film noir directed and, without credit, co-written by Orson Welles. Welles plays Charles Rankin, the identity assumed by Franz Kindler, a high-ranking Nazi fugitive and war criminal. Edward G. Robinson plays Mr. Wilson, an agent of the United Nations War Crimes Commission, and Loretta Young plays Mary Longstreet, Rankin’s intended wife and the daughter of Supreme Court Justice Adam Longstreet. It was Welles’s third completed feature as director and his first film noir.

Kindler has erased evidence that could identify him. The commission knows only of his nearly maniacal passion for clocks. Wilson releases Konrad Meinike, Kindler’s former associate, hoping he will lead him to the fugitive. Meinike travels to Harper, Connecticut, where Rankin teaches at a local prep school and is about to marry Mary.

Rankin is repairing a 400-year-old Habrecht-style clock mechanism with religious automata in the church belfry above the town square. Meinike, repentant and now a Christian, begs him to confess to his crimes. Rankin kills Meinike and buries the body in the woods. Wilson begins investigating newcomers to Harper and recognizes Rankin as Kindler after an offhand statement about Karl Marx. Yet Wilson needs proof, and Mary is the only person who knows of Meinike’s meeting with Rankin.

Mary becomes suspicious after the family dog, Red, discovers Meinike’s body. Rankin poisons the dog, then admits to Mary that he killed Meinike and Red, while claiming that Meinike came to blackmail her and her father. Wilson shows Mary documentary concentration-camp footage and explains Kindler’s part in developing the idea of genocide. Mary is torn between her love for Rankin and the truth.

Welles under studio conditions

Sam Spiegel, billed as S. P. Eagle, produced The Stranger, the last International Pictures production distributed by RKO Pictures. Filming took place from late September to November 21, 1945, at Samuel Goldwyn Studios and Universal Studios. Bronisław Kaper wrote the musical score. Spiegel had planned to hire John Huston, but Welles received the job when Huston entered the military.

This was Welles’s first directing work in four years. Eager to prove he could complete a film on schedule and under budget, he accepted a contract requiring him to defer to the studio in creative disputes. For directing and acting, he was to receive $2,000 a week and $50,000 on completion, with an opportunity to sign a four-picture agreement with International Pictures.

Welles worked on a general script rewrite, wrote the drugstore scenes, and wrote opening scenes that were filmed but later cut by Spiegel and executive producer William Goetz. Editor Ernest J. Nims could remove material considered extraneous before shooting. In 1982, Nims said that 32 pages, including the first 16, had been eliminated at his suggestion. Film historian Bret Wood wrote that character development suffered from the lost scenes.

Perry Ferguson, production designer for Citizen Kane, created a complete town square from interlocking sets. Windows and glass reflections gave views of adjacent buildings, while the set enabled long takes that moved from interiors to storefronts and across the square. A scene between Kindler and Meinike in the woods runs for four uninterrupted minutes. Welles completed the film one day ahead of schedule and under budget.

Documentary footage and response

The Stranger was the first Hollywood film to incorporate actual documentary footage of the Holocaust, and the first commercial film to use documentary footage from Nazi concentration camps. Three of its four post-liberation scenes came from Nazi Concentration Camps (1945), assembled by George Stevens, James B. Donovan and Ray Kellogg and used as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials. Welles saw the footage in San Francisco in early May 1945 while attending the United Nations Conference on International Organization as a correspondent and discussion moderator.

The film was Welles’s only bona fide box-office success upon release. It cost $1.034 million, earned $2.25 million in United States rentals during its first six months, and had grossed $3.216 million after 15 months. It was nominated for the Golden Lion, then called the Grand International Prize, at the 8th Venice International Film Festival. Screenwriter Victor Trivas received an Academy Award nomination for Best Story. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it a “bloodless, manufactured show” in July 1946.

Film details from the Wikipedia article “The Stranger (1946 film)”. Text adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0.