The trace of the stranger
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The trace of the stranger also The stranger |
| Original title | The Stranger |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1946 |
| length | 91 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Orson Welles |
| script |
Victor Trivas John Huston |
| production | Sam Spiegel |
| music | Bronislau caper |
| camera | Russell Metty |
| cut | Ernest J. Nims |
| occupation | |
| |
The Track of the Stranger (alternative title: The Stranger) is an American film noir from 1946. Directed by Orson Welles , who also took on a leading role.
action
Shortly after the end of the Second World War, Mr. Wilson of the Allied War Crimes Commission is looking for fugitive National Socialists who are said to have gone into hiding abroad after Germany's surrender. One of them, the scientist Franz Kindler, is considered one of the intellectual fathers of the concentration camps and the inventor of the gas chambers . In order to track him down, Wilson arranges for his former confidante Konrad Meinike to be released from prison in Europe. He follows him on his way across Latin America to the small town of Harper in Connecticut .
Kindler settled there under the name Charles Rankin after the end of the war. He teaches at the local university as a professor of history and is very popular with the locals. In his free time he repairs the broken tower clock in the church.
On his wedding day with Mary Longstreet, the daughter of a judge, Meinike arrives in Harper to visit his old friend. He has his suitcase kept in Mr. Potter's shop. When he notices that Wilson is tailing him, he knocks him out. After a brief encounter with Mary, Meinike meets Rankin in a nearby forest. Rankin realizes that he no longer has an ally in Meinike - who is deeply religious and also wants to induce him to change his mind; he strangles him as the last living witness of his real identity. In the mistaken assumption that Wilson was killed by Meinike, Rankin buries Meinike's body in the forest and returns to town.
But Wilson recovers from the blow to the back of the head. He takes a room in town, poses as an antique dealer and is invited to dinner by Judge Longstreet. On this occasion, he also meets his son-in-law Rankin. Since there are no photos of the wanted Nazi criminal Kindler, he does not recognize him. Over dinner, Wilson also talks about the situation in post-war Germany. Rankin takes the view that the Germans are impossible to democratize because it is not their nature. To the objection of his brother-in-law Noah that there are also Germans who think differently, such as Karl Marx , he replies that Marx was not a German, but a Jew. This statement arouses Wilson's suspicions; he lets Noah know about his suspicions and asks for assistance.
The next day Wilson was talking to Mr. Potter about the abandoned suitcase Meinike had left in Potter's shop. Mary, who is also present, wants to tell about her encounter with Meinike, of whose true identity she knows nothing, but is prevented by Rankin. He later justified this with the fact that the "mysterious stranger" was a blackmailer who wanted to accuse him of a crime.
When Meinike's body is finally discovered in the forest, Rankin confesses the murder to his wife, but gives the blackmail story as the motive. Mary agrees to support him, but increasingly suffers from feelings of fear and panic attacks. Since Rankin fears that she might betray him to the police to calm her conscience, he decides to kill his wife. He saws a rung of the church tower ladder and asks Mary under a pretext to the top of the tower. Since she is unable to attend, she sends her brother Noah to the meeting in her place. Wilson accompanies him. When climbing the sabotaged ladder, the two only narrowly avoid falling into certain death.
Meanwhile, Rankin finds to his horror that his wife is still alive. When she tells him that she sent Noah to the meeting, he suddenly reveals his real plans to her. Before Wilson arrives, Rankin escapes and hides in the church tower. There it finally comes to the showdown: Mary follows him to the top of the church tower and announces that she will kill him now. When Rankin draws a pistol to kill his wife, Wilson, hidden in the tower, appears to persuade Rankin to give up. In the scuffle that followed, Mary seized Rankin's pistol and fired several shots at Rankin. One of them injures him, but Rankin can still escape to the outside of the church tower. There he is impaled by the sword of a clock figure set in motion by the shots. He can pull the sword out of his body, but then loses his balance and falls into the depths.
background
Trail of the Stranger came about five years after Welles' breakthrough as a director with Citizen Kane . Visually, the film is in a row with other so-called film noir of 1940 years ( The Maltese Falcon , Golden poison ) . Concerning some stylistic devices, such as For example, the creation of suspense and isolated plot elements, parallels to Alfred Hitchcock's films , especially notorious from the same year, can be established.
The Trace of the Stranger is considered to be the first feature film to show authentic footage from German concentration camps.
Though Welles himself has always called it his worst, the film is, judging by the box office results, his most commercially successful. Today it is considered a classic of American post-war cinema and film noir .
synchronization
The German dubbed version was created in Munich in 1980 on behalf of ARD.
| role | actor | German Dubbing voice |
|---|---|---|
| Mr. Wilson | Edward G. Robinson | Lambert Hamel |
| Mary Longstreet | Loretta Young | Katharina Lopinski |
| Charles Rankin / Franz Kindler | Orson Welles | Michael Brennicke |
| Judge Adam Longstreet | Philip Merivale | Til Kiwe |
| Noah Longstreet | Richard Long | Florian Halm |
| Konrad Meinike | Constantine Shayne | Kurt E. Ludwig |
| Mr. Potter, shopkeeper | Billy House | Gernot Duda |
| Dr. Jeffrey Lawrence | Byron Keith | Michael Schwarzmaier |
| Sara, Mary's housekeeper | Martha Wentworth | Margit Weinert |
| Pastor | Neal Dodd | Thomas Reiner |
Reviews
“The Trace of the Stranger still has Welles' visual sophistication, but by 1946 film noir had already adopted his preference for shadows and the grotesque. (...) Would-be philosophers who cheat while playing checkers and high school beauties who marry fascists - Welles anticipates David Lynch by decades with this small town idyll. "
“Behind the superficial and clichéd story, only a little of the originally differentiated basis can be seen. One of the weaker works by Orson Welles. "
Awards
- 1947 : Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay
- 1947 : Nomination for the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival
Web links
- The Stranger in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Film title Casts Film Cast list Movie Cast Characters - synchrondatenbank.de. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
- ↑ German synchronous index | Movies | The trace of the stranger. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
- ↑ The Trail of the Stranger. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .