Flick Review < The stranger | Orson Welles (1946)
Orson Welles –The stranger (1946)
^ The premiere issue of Movie Mystery Magazine (July–August 1946)
featured a novelization of The Stranger.
The stranger (1946)
Director: Orson Welles
Writers: Anthony Veiller (screenplay), Victor Trivas (adaptation),
Orson Welles, John Huston (uncredited)
Stars: Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young
Cinematography: Russell Metty
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* Orson Welles has stated that this is his least favorite of his films.
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** Orson Welles originally wanted Agnes Moorehead to play the FBI part.
The studio said no and instead gave him Edward G. Robinson.
Edward G. Robinson, Richard Long, Loretta Young, Martha Wentworth, Orson Welles, Philip
Merivale, Byron Keith, and an unidentified actress in The Stranger, 1946
Merivale, Byron Keith, and an unidentified actress in The Stranger, 1946
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The quote recited by Mr. Wilson (Edward G. Robinson) is from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay
titled Compensation. “The league between virtue and nature engages all things to assume a hostile
front to vice. The beautiful laws and substances of the world persecute and whip the traitor.
He finds that things are arranged for truth and benefit, but there is no den in the wide world
to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it
seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of
every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, you
cannot wipe out the foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet
or clew. Some damning circumstance always transpires. The laws and substances of
nature – water, snow, wind, gravitation – become penalties to the thief.”
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