The Stranger (1946 American Thriller film noir)

Directed and co-written by Orson Welles, starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Orson Welles. Welles's third completed feature film as director and his first film noir, it centers on a war crimes investigator tracking a high-ranking Nazi fugitive to a Connecticut town. It is the first Hollywood film to present documentary footage of the Holocaust.

The film was nominated for the Golden Lion (then-called the ‘Grand International Prize’) at the 8th Venice International Film Festival. Screenwriter Victor Trivas received an Oscar nomination for Best Story.

Plot
Mr. Wilson is an agent of the United Nations War Crimes Commission who is hunting for Nazi fugitive Franz Kindler, a war criminal who has erased all evidence which might identify him. He has left no clue to his identity except "a hobby that almost amounts to a mania—clocks."

Wilson releases Kindler's former associate Meinike, hoping the man will lead him to Kindler. Wilson follows Meinike to a small town in Connecticut but loses him before he meets with Kindler. Kindler has assumed a new identity as "Charles Rankin" and has become a teacher at a local prep school. He is about to marry Mary Longstreet, daughter of Supreme Court Justice Adam Longstreet, and is involved in repairing the town's 400-year-old Habrecht-style clock mechanism with religious automata that crowns the belfry of a church in the town square.

Meinike attacks Wilson, leaving him for dead, and meets Kindler. Meinike is repentant and has become a Christian and begs Kindler to confess his own crimes. Instead, Kindler strangles Meinike, who might expose him.

Cast
Orson Welles as Franz Kindler/Professor Charles Rankin
Edward G. Robinson as Mr. Wilson
Loretta Young as Mary Longstreet Rankin
Philip Merivale as Judge Adam Longstreet
Richard Long as Noah Longstreet
Konstantin Shayne as Konrad Meinike
Byron Keith as Dr. Jeffrey Lawrence
Billy House as Mr. Potter
Martha Wentworth as Sara
Isabel O'Madigan as Mrs. Lawrence
Pietro Sosso as Mr. Peabody
Erskine Sanford as Party Guest

Production
Produced by Sam Spiegel (who then billed himself as S. P. Eagle), The Stranger was the last International Pictures Production distributed by RKO Pictures.: 212 Filming took place from late September to November 21, 1945, at Samuel Goldwyn Studios and Universal Studios. The film's musical score is by Bronisław Kaper.

Spiegel initially planned to hire John Huston to direct The Stranger. When Huston entered the military, Welles was given the chance to direct the film and prove himself able to make a film on schedule and under budget—something he was so eager to do that he accepted a disadvantageous contract. In September 1945 Welles and his wife Rita Hayworth signed a guarantee that Welles would owe International Pictures any of his earnings, from any source, above $50,000 a year if he did not meet his contractual obligations. He also agreed to defer to the studio in any creative dispute. The Stranger was Welles's first job as a film director in four years.

Editor Ernest J. Nims was given the power to cut any material he considered extraneous from the script before shooting began. "He was the great supercutter," Welles said, "who believed that nothing should be in a movie that did not advance the story. And since most of the good stuff in my movies doesn't advance the story at all, you can imagine what a nemesis he was to me."

For directing and acting in The Stranger, Welles was to receive $2,000 a week:   plus $50,000 when the film was completed, and a chance to sign a four-picture deal with International Pictures, making films of his own choosing