Orson Welles plays Charles Rankin, a history teacher in a school for boys in small town Harper, Connecticut. Rankin is actually ex-Nazi Franz Kindler, who was in control of German concentration camps; in fact it was said that Kindler conceived the theory of genocide. I wish that this story could have been played in a lower key. While some ex-Nazis did enter the U.S. after the war (see the book "The Nazis Next Door") it is improbable that such a high level Nazi could have slipped in, untracked, to become an upstanding citizen so quickly after the war (this movie was released less than a year after the end of WWII). And how was it that he had no trace of a German accent? He was engaged to be married to a local woman who was the daughter of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice no less. I doubt that at a dinner party Kindler would have been so willing to provide the somewhat sympathetic analysis that Germans saw themselves as innocent victims of world envy and hatred, conspired against and set upon by inferior peoples and and inferior nations. It would have been more believable to me to have had Kindler be a lower level Nazi scheduled to marry a middle class American housewife who was not the daughter of a nationally-known father. Surely a person as high-profile as Kindler would have been a candidate for the Nuremberg Trials.
If you accept the setup, then the movie has things to offer. As you might expect from any movie that Orson Welles is involved with would have interesting filming techniques. This movie is in the film noir style--unusual camera angles, high contrast black and white, much use of shadows, and thriller aspects building to fantastic final scenes.
Unfortunately it is easy to remember Welles as the overweight pitch man for merchandise on TV, most notably Paul Masson wine, but it is good to be reminded here that the young Welles was an attractive man and a decent actor. It was an unusual choice to have Loretta Young play Kindler's fiancée, but I thought she was well cast and carried the part well. Edward G. Robinson plays the agent trying to track down Kindler's whereabouts and, as always, Edward G. Robinson plays Edward G. Robinson.
There is some archival footage of concentration camp horrors. No matter how often I have seen such it is always shocking and sickening to see it. I can remember that the first time I had seen such footage was in "Judgment at Nuremberg." I can only imagine that this footage was especially hard to digest by audiences in 1946.
If you are like me who did not know that paper chase was a game, you will see such a game played here.
A straight story detailing how a German war criminal could wind up getting into the U.S. and settling down would be interesting.
If you accept the setup, then the movie has things to offer. As you might expect from any movie that Orson Welles is involved with would have interesting filming techniques. This movie is in the film noir style--unusual camera angles, high contrast black and white, much use of shadows, and thriller aspects building to fantastic final scenes.
Unfortunately it is easy to remember Welles as the overweight pitch man for merchandise on TV, most notably Paul Masson wine, but it is good to be reminded here that the young Welles was an attractive man and a decent actor. It was an unusual choice to have Loretta Young play Kindler's fiancée, but I thought she was well cast and carried the part well. Edward G. Robinson plays the agent trying to track down Kindler's whereabouts and, as always, Edward G. Robinson plays Edward G. Robinson.
There is some archival footage of concentration camp horrors. No matter how often I have seen such it is always shocking and sickening to see it. I can remember that the first time I had seen such footage was in "Judgment at Nuremberg." I can only imagine that this footage was especially hard to digest by audiences in 1946.
If you are like me who did not know that paper chase was a game, you will see such a game played here.
A straight story detailing how a German war criminal could wind up getting into the U.S. and settling down would be interesting.