The Stranger

The Stranger is a 1946 crime thriller set in the United States shortly after the Second World War. A federal agent named Wilson works for the War Crimes Commission, hunting a Nazi fugitive called Franz Kindler who has vanished without leaving a photograph behind. The only leads are a former associate who might be able to identify him and Kindler's fondness for repairing the mechanisms of large clocks. Wilson traces his quarry to a quiet Connecticut town, where he suspects the man is living under the name Charles Rankin, a respected professor at a local university who is engaged to the daughter of a Supreme Court justice. The investigation is complicated when the one person able to confirm the identification is killed before he can do so.

Orson Welles directed the film and plays Professor Rankin, with Edward G. Robinson as Agent Wilson. Loretta Young appears as Mary Longstreet, and the cast also includes Philip Merivale, Richard Long and Konstantin Shayne. Anthony Veiller wrote the screenplay, and John Huston and Sam Spiegel produced. Welles made the film between The Magnificent Ambersons and The Lady from Shanghai, the third of the twelve features he directed.

Made for about one million dollars by RKO Radio Pictures with International Pictures and The Haig Corporation, the film took roughly three million dollars worldwide, a solid return for its budget. On IMDb it holds 7.3/10 from around 31,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.2/10 from roughly 660 votes. A critics' rating of 7.8/10 from 32 reviews places it somewhat above those audience scores.