7.4 | / 10 |
Users | 2.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 2.4 |
Charles Rankin, a respected academic at a prominent Connecticut college seems to have the perfect life: a beautiful new wife; and a charming home in a small town that holds him in high esteem. Enter Mr. Wilson, a detective on the hunt for Nazi war criminal Franz Kindler. The appearance of Mr. Wilson threatens to reveal that underneath this idyllic veneer is a secret that could tear everything apart.
Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, Orson Welles, Philip Merivale, Richard LongFilm-Noir | 100% |
Drama | 22% |
Crime | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
DVD copy
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 2.5 | |
Audio | 2.5 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
The immediate post-World War II era in the United States is a really fascinating little interlude to study. The horrors of the war were over physically at least, if they still created emotional scars for many. And for a couple of blissful years, the United States remained the only nuclear nation on the planet, so we hadn’t yet arrived at the increasingly manic paranoia of the Cold War and nuclear ages. We also hadn’t quite gotten into that almost schizophrenic propensity of the 1950’s, where sanguinity and fear commingled with sometimes odd results. Turning the channel of early 1950’s television brought the viewer I Love Lucy on one station and the McCarthy anti-Communist rants on another. Orson Welles’ 1946 film The Stranger is an often mesmerizing peek into the American consciousness of that era. Cast in a sort of proto- noir ambience, the film essays a pre-McCarthy era look at infiltration by “enemy combatants,” in this case a Nazi war criminal who has made it to the sylvan refuge of Connecticut and taken up life as a prep school professor. When one considers Welles’ own unabashed left wing sympathies, the film might also be seen as intentionally ironic, a slyly subversive parody of small town Americana wrapped around the focal point of an easy target, a murderous, probably half-mad, German émigré. But of course Welles’ very leftist proclivities would have been anti- fascistic if simultaneously pro-Communist, back in a time when the two “ism”’s were sharply differentiated and not as murkily joined in most peoples’ minds as they are today. This was, after all, still in an era when “Communism was cool” for the American intelligentsia highly cultured class. And in fact if anything is even slightly parodied in The Stranger, it’s the very sanguinity which would soon engulf the United States for much of the next decade, and which is referred to in the film fairly specifically with regard to a perhaps shell-shocked post-war Germany.
Just your friendly neighborhood Nazi war criminal.
Let the games begin! Like a lot of public domain offerings, there was evidently no chance for new niche label Film Chest to get to an internegative or even a safety for source elements, and so this AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1 must be judged on a slightly different scale than an archivally preserved film would be. This was sourced from a 35mm print, and if the brief restoration demonstration is any indication, Film Chest has done a very good job in cleaning this print up, rather substantially in fact. Unfortunately that clean up job has also wiped away virtually any trace of grain, and so this transfer has the same textureless appearance we got on another "restored" print of The Stranger a few years ago on DVD in the Citizen Welles set. In other regards, there are both positives and negatives to this release. The negatives are an overall soft image with overblown contrast (especially in the outdoor scenes which feature whites awfully close to blooming territory). Strangely, this overblown contrast means that black levels are frequently exceptional and that in turn means some of Welles' shadowy, dusky scenes look marvelous. And, really, there are moments in close-ups where this film looks rather impressively sharp. Is this as good as the film could have looked? Probably not. Is it horrible? No. It's too smooth and lacking in fine detail, and contrast is not what it should be, but it's clean, almost entirely free of dirt, debris and damage, and that should count for something. It boils down to whether you're a glass half full or glass half empty viewer.
There are two unfortunate things about the audio on this new Blu-ray release. The first, more obvious one, is that we don't have a lossless offering, which in a film as dialogue heavy as this wouldn't be a deal breaker if it weren't for Bronislaw Kaper's gorgeous underscore, one of his most romantic and mysterious pieces. But even worse is that fact that source elements for both the Dolby tracks (5.1 and 2.0) sport some pretty bad damage at times which has not been alleviated in any discernable way. Hiss is overwhelming on at least a couple of occasions, and we also get pops, cracks, and other anomalies with surprising regularity. On at least two occasions there are also brief synchronization issues. Obviously no actual stems were available for this release, and so the 5.1 mix really seems like a bit of overkill, with little if any immersion resulting. The 2.0 track is nominally better simply because it hews more closely to the original sound design of the film, which wasn't overly aggressive to begin with. Aside from the damage, dialogue is clear and crisp and Kaper's score doesn't suffer too badly. The entire track in both its 5.1 and 2.0 incarnations sounds awfully boxy, however, with severely compressed highs and lows.
I never count things like a Theatrical Trailer or a Restoration Demonstration as a bona fide supplement, but your mileage may vary.
The Stranger is a fascinating film for any number of reasons. Welles managed to subtly interject his directorial genius here without completely blowing himself out of the water as he did on The Magnificent Ambersons. But the film is really a prescient piece of political philosophizing, ably prophesying both the McCarthy era and that weird complacency that is part and parcel of the Eisenhower years. This Blu- ray has image and especially audio issues, but the film itself is certainly Recommended.
1942
1946
1944
Warner Archive Collection
1951
1947
1951
The Paris Express
1952
Deluxe Edition
1949
Hot Spot
1941
1954
1952
1949
1948
1954
4K Restoration
1948
1955
1957
Warner Archive Collection
1947
1957
Limited Edition to 3000
1987