The Stranger (1946)

Second viewing; previously viewed on June 23, 1996.

After the end of World War II, a fugitive German ex-official assumes a new identity in a small American town. Just as he is getting married to a local woman, an investigator in an international organization tracks him down to that town but must prove that he is really the man they are looking for.

One of the fundamental premises for The Stranger is that the elite of a certain people is displaced from their land after it is conquered by others in a war. In exile, they hope to, when the situation permits it, assemble a cabal which would plan a future ruling of the world. Aside from the identity of the nations involved, doesn't this sound like a prequel to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? And an exciting one, too, full of suspense and marvelously designed shots and sequences. On another angle, this is a problematic film, because it doesn't question the ethical implications of putting the suspect's wife in danger in the course of an investigation. There is a curious detail in the plot which intrigued me, and here's a warning that this is going to be a SPOILER: at one point, the German impostor says that Marx was not a German, but a Jew. This is crucial for the plot, because the investigator changes his mind about giving up on him as a suspect; he reasons that only a Nazi would say such a thing. But what intrigued me was that he only came to such a conclusion hours after the event. If it was such an obvious thing, why wasn't he immediately shocked by it?

Rating: 54 (up from 30)