Touches You

Such a frustrating disappointment

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This film is another great one by Orson Welles. Throughout his career he made many great films including the none other but Citizen Kane. This film follows a contemporary story of the time taking period after World War II. The film is beautifully edited and the key point of the clock is well woven throughout the story line. This is another great film noir and lives well up to Welles name.

This film may have the questionable label as the weakest in Welles' canon, but The Stranger is particularly significant in the development of post-war film noir.Posing as a teacher at a boys' school in Harper, Connecticut, a Nazi war criminal-in-hiding (Orson Welles), about to marry the daughter of good family (Loretta Young), discovers the presence of an FBI agent (Edward G. Robinson) sent by the government to track him down.The cat-and-mouse game that ensues arguably does veer into the preposterous; it is over-emoted, full of curious improbabilities and implausible coincidences. But in its own peculiar way, the film compels.Earlier in the decade, Thornton Wilder's Our Town set the prototype of small-town America, but film noir brings out an alternative view, notably in Shadow of a Doubt, Out of the Past, The Killers and the noir underbelly of It's A Wonderful Life. The cycle of films expresses the national anxiety following World War II as threatening crime intrudes into America's safe places. Loretta Young here represents the complacent American suddenly traumatized by the inconceivable. This is part of Welles' point. Harper assumes itself to have nothing to be afraid of. But in the circumstances, the small town turns perverse, full of harsh lighting effects, odd camera angles, grotesque faces, murderous events stretched to the limits of plausibility - all achieved through Welles' preference for the angular and distorted, harsh lighting and layered compositions. Harper eventually closes in on the Nazi war criminal Franz Kindler; the radius gets narrower and narrower, the world shrinks finally to the space inside the church bell tower, trapping 'the stranger' in the deadly mechanism of a medieval clock.The clock, operating randomly, with medieval figures that move and (when needed) pierce sharply with their spears, is a sign that time itself is out of joint. Appropriately, Kindler the Nazi is fatally wounded by clock figures that, as he has himself explained earlier, derive from Teutonic mythology. Thus, figures from the historical past destroy the modern abomination.The most lucrative for Welles of all his films, The Stranger had good box office. It moves quickly, and there is always an unexpected situation coming up, and we keep wondering about that clock in the church square.The use of concentration camp newsreel and the release of the film during the Nuremberg trials make it contemporary and relevant to the post-war era.

There are plenty of reasons to love a noir film. And this film gives you plenty to choose from. Maybe not the strongest plot, but it has beautiful camera work, and great control of lights and shadows. After World War II there was a large amount of controversy over such atrocities such as the holocaust. I think that the bottled up pain and anguish that the American population suffered was in a sense justified with the hunting and eventually execution of the remaining Nazi's. Orson Welles really understood his audience, and was able to produce a great film for the age.

(Flash Review)A smartly edited and written story about a former NAZI leader who tries to blend into a small town in Connecticut. Two non-locals follow him there to apprehend him and begin asking questions. One of those men disappears and many more questions are raised. Will the NAZI be able to keep his cover and his true identify a mystery? This film had great character development, was very well acted and the dialog was smart and intriguing. One drawback was that the NAZI guy didn't have anywhere close to a German accent. But that was easily overlooked as Welles played him and his acting along with the dramatic shot framing and use of shadow and angles helped bolster his character and the mood of the story. At times, it had some similarities to a Hitchcock and the scope of the story felt right. A solid little 40's gem.