A War Crimes Commission agent follows a trail to a quiet Connecticut town, where a respected teacher is really a hidden Nazi war criminal. His new wife starts to suspect him. Worth watching for how Welles makes a peaceful postcard town feel dangerous.
At a glance
The Stranger is a 1946 film noir, thriller and crime film directed by Orson Welles. This breakdown covers 5 techniques (2 narrative, 1 editing and 2 cinematography), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Get Out uses several of the same techniques.
Letting the audience know something a character doesn't. You watch them act without that knowledge, which creates suspense, dread or dark comedy.
How this film uses it
You learn early that the teacher Charles Rankin is the fugitive Franz Kindler, but the townspeople and his bride do not. Every friendly dinner and church visit gets tense.
Where to see it
Rankin kills a former associate and poisons the family dog: you see the cruelty, while the town keeps trusting him.
Cutting real documentary or archive footage into a fictional story, such as authentic records of wartime atrocities. It grounds the fiction in history and blurs the line between cinema and the record.
How this film uses it
Agent Wilson shows Mary real footage of Nazi concentration camps. It was one of the first mainstream films to use that footage, and it breaks the movie's thriller tone on purpose.
Where to see it
Wilson's screening for Mary: the real camp footage makes her face who she married and sets up her confrontation with him.
Treating a small town as more than a setting. Its buildings, lighting and relationships show the community's values and limits, which shape what the characters can do and what gets destroyed.
How this film uses it
The town of Harper looks calm and tidy, with a drugstore, a church and a clock tower. That neatness is the cover a fugitive needs, and it makes the evil inside harder to spot.
Where to see it
Daily life in Harper: the shop, the school and the church show a community that welcomes Rankin without asking questions.
Showing an object or detail early on that becomes important later. The idea is that nothing gets screen time unless the story is going to use it.
How this film uses it
The town clock is a project Rankin takes on and repairs. Its bell becomes a plot tool for the ending.
Where to see it
The clock tower finale: the repaired clock bell draws the townspeople outside as Mary and Kindler meet in the belfry.
Staging the climax at a famous real place, so the danger plays out against something you already recognize. The location gives the scene scale and stakes.
How this film uses it
Welles saves his ending for the clock tower the whole town can see. Kindler dies there, in view of the place that sheltered him.
Where to see it
The belfry: Mary takes a gun from Kindler and shoots him, and he falls from the clock face onto a mechanical figure's blade.
Questions
Keep watching
Same director
Same era
