# The Stranger: 1946 Film-Noir \[1:34:04\] Orson Welles, E.G. Robinson

Welles plays a Nazi named Franz Kindler who, after the end of the Second World War, has escaped to the United States and lays low in a small Connecticut town under the name Charles Rankin. Edward G. Robinson costars as Wilson, an agent of the Allied War Crimes Commission hot on Rankin’s trail. The former Nazi has tried to blend in; he teaches at the local school for boys and weds Mary (Loretta Young), the daughter of the town judge. Welles plays Rankin as suspiciously elegant, lending to the idea that anyone anywhere could be the enemy—that incognito Nazis could penetrate even the most inconsequential parts of postwar America. The idea was to destroy the illusion of safety for the average American citizen Producer Sam Spiegel, who at the time was a rookie in Hollywood, pushed for Veiller’s script for The Stranger , based on a story by Victor Trivas, to be financed by International Pictures and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures (the script would eventually be doctored by John Huston). Welles was hired as both director and the film’s villain, but he had only modest input on the script. Made for little more than $1 million, it garnered upwards of $3 million at the box-office in its initial release. Behind the scenes, Hollywood lore tells us Welles shot a long sequence in which a Nazi named Konrad Meinike (Konstantin Shayne) searches for Kindler—some twenty minutes longer than the one that appears in the film, and possibly resembling the dizzying searching-down-a-lead sequences…

- Kind: Feature
- Year: 1940
- By: Orson Welles
- Genres: Crime, Film noir
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/the-stranger-1946_202404)
- Licence or status: [Public Domain Mark 1.0](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/) (as the archive states it)
- Who can watch: Adult profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

Not offered: its uploader marks it public domain, and the US Copyright Office's records do not settle that it is (a record that may be another film's, a film first published abroad, a year when renewal was automatic, or a country they do not name). Unclear is not offered.