The Stranger

[Glenn Anders]

Mike: My understanding is that John Huston (still in uniform, still under contract to another studio) wrote the screenplay for THE STRANGER from a Victor Trivas story, adapted by Trivas and Decla Dunning. Welles provided a more flexible flashback structure and embellishments (which he considered the best part of the picture), while Anthony Veiller, who assisted (as he often did for Huston), got the credit. My Macresarf1 review provides considerable detail on these points, as well as connections to the other part of our discussion:

http://www1.epinions.com/review/mvie_mu ... 0772085380

And yes, Mike, Operation Paperclip was the second of eight such Displaced Persons Acts, which had titles like Operation Overcast (1945), Operation Bloodstone (1950), The Lodge Act (1950), and Project 63 (1950). The original Allied resolve to root out Nazis, Fascists, and Japanese Militarists was quickly reversed in the Postwar, and though some of the above American legislation served a good purpose, an incredible number of major war criminals were employed in the U.S., South America, and other places in the World under their aegis. These criminals or their representatives seem to have formed a lobbies, such as The World Anti-Communist League and Fred Malek's groups (which have influenced our politics for over 40 years -- See, Fred Malek, Sarah Palin). In retrospect, even the names of the Displaced Persons Acts take on sinister implications. Welles would have been well aware of the shift in American geopolitical emphasis because of his identification with the Henry Wallace Progressive wing of FDR's New Deal coalition. That wing was more or less purged during the Election of 1948 by the more conventional Democrats around Harry Truman.

[On the other hand, true, when we fired Saddam Hussein's whole army in 2003, we contributed mightily to the mess in that poor country, today. But that was a different time, a different situation.]

As for ROUGES' REGIMENT (1948), no doubt the film was influenced by THE STRANGER, Mike, and the picture does bring up America's assistance to the French in reestablishing their colonial hegemony in Indo-China, well over a decade before the American Public had real awareness of our involvement. But the film itself is rather trivial, and the major characters played by Dick Powell, Stephen McNallly, and Marta Toren are perfunctory. As it comes down to us, ROUGES REGIMENT is not one of the better realized works by Director Robert Florey (THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS, THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK).

Glenn

[tonyw]

I've only seen ROGUE'S REGIMENT once many decades ago but my memories tend to agree with Glenn. I do remember an amusing scenes when an ex-SS officer is discovered by a French Officer who notices the Death's Head Tattoo and is enraged that someone like that wants to join the Foreign Legion! When NONE SHALL ESCAPE was released, DeToth noticed the anger certain people had towards a black judge being included in the proto- UN tribunal. I've just watched Knox playing another Nazi in DeToth's TWO HEADED SPY starring Jack Hawkins with Michael Caine in a brief, uncredited role as a Gestapo officer.

[mteal]

Thanks for the link, Glenn. It may have been you that mentioned it here, but the name "Rankin" given to Kindler as an alias, seems like a fairly obvious tagging of Mississippi Representative John E. Rankin, one of the most virulently racist congressmen of the time, and later one of the leading lights of HUAC. So the fact that, as you say, Nazis had already infiltrated the U.S. by 1946 is apparently conflated with the idea that many southerners in the U.S. were spiritual bretheren with the Fascists. It didn't help the liberal cause that some of the greatest heroes of the war, like Audie Murphy, were from the south. And southern conservatives no doubt played a significant role in the political demise of Henry Wallace.

In the early 1950's, Welles wrote a screenplay called OPERATION CENDRLLON, the title of which might allude to the many other "Operations" being carried out by the U.S. in Europe. Welles called it the best comedy script he ever wrote, but one can't help but think it might have many satirical political points as well. Too bad it's not available to read. Hopefully it still exists.

The last time I was at Lilly I looked through Welles's research files, browsing maybe about a third of them. One thing I was struck by was how many articles Welles kept by a now forgotten journalist named Edgar Ansel Mowrer, who wrote for the Chicago Daily News and was syndicated in a few other papers. In 1948, Mowrer wrote a book called THE NIGHTMARE OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY, which probably concurs with many of your points and would be well worth getting a copy of, but I wonder if Welles and Huston weren't also influenced on THE STRANGER by a much earlier Mowrer book, a 1933 Pulitzer Prize winner called, interestingly enough, GERMANY PUTS THE CLOCK BACK.

[Glenn Anders]

Good work, Mike!

I remember nothing about Welles' proposed script, OPERATION CENDRILLON. [I wonder if anyone else does.] From what little I can gather, the picture sounds a little like Peter Sellers' AFTER THE FOX, a picture I liked a lot, which had Sellers as an over-the-top movie director, and featured Welles' old rival for Rita Hayworth's warmth, Victor Mature, as an over-the-hill Hollywood star making a film with Claudia Cardinale (the Latina bombshell of her time -- a Tunisian, actually) at an Italian down-on-its-luck seaside resort. Very funny!

I should have marked, too, Representative John Rankin of Mississippi as a possible avatar for Franz Kindler. Not all Southerners were nativist fascists, naturally, but Representative Rankin, who became the Chairman of the House Un-American Affairs Committee just after the War, fit the bill. Welles, through his alliance with Henry Wallace's Progressive Wing of the Democratic Party, would have been familiar with Rankin's agenda. He called the KKK, "an old American Institution," found Communists everywhere, especially among the Progressives, and regularly referred to African-Americans and Jews in the most derogatory of terms, even on the Floor of the House.

Drawing a blank, too, on Edgar Ansel Mowrer; that's three strikes and out, even for a Giants' fan. But the man's book titles and work for the Chicago Daily News would suggest Welles' attraction to Mowrer's analysis. GERMANY PUTS THE CLOCK BACK (1933) reminds me, as it may have Welles, fifteen years later, of his epigraph for MACBETH: "The charm's wound up." Huston and Welles could certainly see how our political climate was beginning to change.

I have personal reason to fear their warnings of Fascism coming to America.

Your report, Mike, reminds me afresh of Welles' prescient relevance, as news comes that my Alma Mater, Kent State University, having apparently learned nothing from 40 years of denial about the shootings of May 4, 1970, has begun to "crack down" on anti-war protests by expelling an Afghanistan War Veteran for attempting to organize his fellow G.I. Bill students against the continuation of that conflict.

"The Kent Truth Tribunal" hearings, convened by Laurel Krause, a younger sister of one of the eleven killed and wounded (mostly innocent) students at the time, and Emily Kunstler (daughter of the famous Civil Rights attorney), has just completed, a three-city video record (Kent, San Francisco, New York), taking over a hundred hours of testimony on the atrocity. The most startling revelation, just two weeks ago, is that audio analysis of a random student reel-to-reel tape (shades of TOUCH OF EVIL!) supports a contention that, 70 seconds before the fatal Ohio National Guard volley, a .38 revolver is heard firing four times. A police informant/FBI stringer is known to have been carrying such a pistol, though despite conflicting accounts, the official story has always been that the pistol was never fired. [And that we should, "move on."] The individual in question was given protection, later turned up as an FBI drug agent in Washington D.C, made a lot of money suddenly, and served time in California prisons before disappearing in the oblivion of the Carolinas.

Then, fellow Clevelander and KSU Grad (also former car thief), California Representative Darrell Issa, CPAC/BigGovernment Star, surveillance millionaire ["Viper"] -- a contentious, contradictory figure, at the very least -- is poised to become Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, should the Republicans take over in November. He promises to launch investigations of "traitorous activities in the Obama Administration." As I wrote to an old Kent friend, a professor at Kent in 1970, "This is where we came into the movie."

But of course, the "corporatists" want to roll atomic dice in their revised script.

I wonder what Orson Welles would have thought of it all?

Glenn

[tonyw]

I used the Rankin connection when I taught my Welles class last Spring semester. We must also remember the preliminary role played by Dies in the pre-war HUAC Committee. According to Reynold Humphries in HOLLYWOOD'S BLACKLISTS many of these people also had Nazi connections and had gained the approval of Dr. Geobbels.

[mteal]

Ah yes, Dies, the villain of CRADLE WILL ROCK, and a southerner (Texan, to be specific). No doubt many southerners were not racists or fascist supporters. In fact, FDR's political power came from his ability to maintain the fragile balance between eastern and southern wings of the Democratic Party. But the Klan was of course, mainly a phenomenon of the south, and it's affinites with Fascism seem pretty clear. Here's the quote Glenn mentioned in the Wiki entry on Dies:

In pre-war years and during World War II, HUAC was known as the Dies Committee. Its work was supposed to be aimed mostly at German American involvement in Nazi and Ku Klux Klan activity, such as the German American Bund. As to investigations into the activities of the "Klan,", the Committee actually did little. When HUAC's chief counsel Ernest Adamson announced that: "The committee has decided that it lacks sufficient data on which to base a probe," committee member John E. Rankin added: "After all, the KKK is an old American institution."

Wiki goes on to explain how Dies actually undermined the war effort by continuing to investigate alleged Communist supporters in the government after the U.S. had formed an alliance with Stalin, all the while ignoring FDR's request to root out Nazi supporters. In the original screenplay for THE STRANGER, Kindler was known as "Kuhn" instead, probably a reference to Fritz Kuhn, leader of the German American Bund, who referred to FDR as "President Rosenfeld", and described The New Deal as the "Jew Deal".

[ToddBaesen]

The actual title of the script Mteal is talking about is OPERATION CINDERELLA, written around the time Welles went back to Italy to make OTHELLO.

ORSON WELLES: The best comedy script I ever wrote (How many others were there, I wonder?)... It's about the occupation of a small town in Italy. It's always been occupied--by Romans and the Goths, the Saracens, the Barbary pirates, and then by the Germans and the English. Peace finally, and then suddenly a long line of trucks comes up the road. Who is it now? Hollywood! It's the story of the occupation of this town by a movie company. The population divides between the collaborators--those who play along with the movie company--and the underground who tries to get rid of them. Great part for Anna Magnani as the Passionaria of the underground.

--See more of Welles comments in THIS IS ORSON WELLES, page 413.

[Glenn Anders]

Mike: I don't want to dwell on the Southern aspect overmuch.

Back then, I can testify that, in the 1930 and the early 1940's especially, until the beginning of the Second World War, due perhaps to our diverse origins, Americans were not only as racist, but much more proudly, openly bigoted than we are today. I can remember well the whispers and finger-pointing even in the innocent small place, the "Our Town" where I grew up. Undemocratic laws based on the original failings in our Constitution were all over the States of our land. Little towns and big cities were segregated into religious, ethnic and racial enclaves which provided rich opportunities for populist demagogues of all kinds, natural breeding grounds for the new philosophy of Fascism. Southern demagogues had the additional incentives of bitterness over defeat in the Civil War and the unfairness of the Reconstruction. Representative Rankin was a prime example of such a leader.

[I'm reminded of Richard Whorf's KEEPER OF THE FLAME, similar in style to CITIZEN KANE, which dealt with the hidden agenda, the secret fascist attitudes, of that kind of figure -- said to have been based on one of Tallulah Bankhead's numerous political forebears, one of whom was Speaker of the House of Representatives.]

Orson Welles stood out as an artistic, social and political figure against these attitudes in a way that few others of his time did.

Fritz Kuhn, Huey Long, Father Coughlin, Gerald L.K. Smith, William Pelley, and many others were representatives of what I call "nativist fascism" abroad in America. Absent the generally wise and brilliant hand of FDR, had one or a combination of them formed a real military/industrial base, they might have produced a figure roughly similar to Adolph Hitler or Benito Mussolini. Looking at our social landscape today, I see a similar sinister potential for our future. More so, because the Right now has that Military-Industrial Complex, formed to fight World War II, plus a deadly series of Un-Constitutional "wars" to further our Post-World War II economic imperialism. And President Obama unfortunately does not appear to be an FDR in leading us back toward realizing the full potential of our Constitution. The prevailing attitude today is that "The Constitution is supposed to aid me . . . but not you."

We shall have more "Kent States" anon, I'm afraid. And like a peculiar desire to touch with our tongues the whirring drill in our mouths when we go to the dentist, I fear that we are acting, in a combination of psychological projection and identification, to bring about the very catastrophes at home we most fear.

All of that message is inherent, as you suggest, Mike, in THE STRANGER.

Thank you, Todd, for setting the record straight on OPERATION CINDERELLA, though I have seen references to "Operation Cendrillon," and the basic story, seems to me, does closely resemble the 1966 AFTER THE FOX (which starred Brit Eckland, not the Italian actress I stipulated).

[mteal]

Thanks for the Welles quote, Todd. I could be wrong, but I think "Cendrillon" might actually mean Cinderella. Sounds more like some kind of industrial object to me.

Glenn, no we shouldn't overplay the southern thing, although it probably would be a good idea to at least mention Welles's biggest confrontation with the south, which would be the Isaac Woodard case. The anti-communist stance of many southern leaders no doubt stemmed from their fears and loathing of any form of racial equality. Welles paid a stiff price for standing out against those attitudes, but he recognized how they were analogous and intertwined with what was going on in Europe at the time. Europe and the American South have been Intertwined in the economic sense in many ways as well. The relationship between Texas and Germany is particularly intriguing, not just because of the enormous number of German immigrants that made their way there since the 1830's, but also because Texas oil companies fueled, if you will, the enormous American demand for automobiles (a German invention, as President Obama recently found out the hard way). The clock was also a German invention.

Glad you mentioned Huey Long, since, according to Frank Brady, Welles considered making a film of Harnett Kane's LOUISIANA HAYRIDE (based on Long) as a followup to CITIZEN KANE. And thanks for the tip on KEEPER OF THE FLAME. Maybe I'll check the Tracy/Hepburn film out.

[Lance Morrison]

Good discussion, folks

DVD Beaver indicates that the MGM US DVD release of the film from 2007 is the best option--and based on their captures it looks better than whatever bloody version i saw back in the day--Am i right to presume that nothing better has come out since?

[mteal]

Not to my knowledge. However, if you get the MGM HD channel, they show what I believe is the MGM DVD of THE STRANGER upgraded to simulate High definition. Looks impressive, better then the DVD, IMO.

[Roger Ryan]

Lance - You'll notice back on Page 2 of this thread a link to a recent review of THE STRANGER and a mention of a company that has reportedly done a new HD restoration of the film. My feeling is that this recent restoration was taken on independently since I believe THE STRANGER still remains in the public domain (meaning an older print of the film was obtained by the restoration company and digitally cleaned-up). I draw this conclusion based solely on the fact that the only-slightly "older" MGM DVD release looks really good, leaving little room for improvement in my opinion. More than likely the MGM HD channel showing was from the same HD master used for the DVD, but less-compressed since the digital information didn't need to be crushed down to fit on a disc. As has become more evident in the age of Blu-ray, there is a disarming trend to "restore" or clean-up films too much, leaving little-to-no film grain and waxy complexions on the actors; Universal's recent Blu-ray release of SPARTACUS has been criticized for this. It's a careful balance between getting a good image and maintaining the look of the actual film when originally released.

[Lance Morrison]

Yes, it is a shame when restoration involves adulterating the original look of the film, something we now have to deal with during the bluray era. I have no way of viewing the HD broadcast, so as it is, Mr. Ryan's recommendation is sufficient for me to seek out the MGM DVD. Thanks, gentlemen.

[ToddBaesen]

As Roger points out, the recent "restoration" of THE STRANGER was done independently, and probably without the input of any major Welles experts.

Given how the restoration of OTHELLO turned out, I think there is a good chance that the restored version of THE STRANGER could actually be much worse than the MGM DVD, which I thought looked wonderful. So until some trusted Welles experts see the restored STRANGER and offer up their opinion, I would guess it could be a disappointment (at best--depending on what source material was used) and a possible fiasco (at worst).

This rather pessimistic view came to my mind after I realized that several of Welles's films have not been presented at their best on DVD. The "restored" version of OTHELLO leads that list, but it also includes the "over-restored" DVD of CITIZEN KANE that WB released. Raindrops missing from Mr. Berrnstein's office window, and scratches gone from the "News on the March" sequence may seem like little things to some, but obviously those admittedly subtle changes got by whatever quality checking was done by Warner Home Video, who obviously have way more time, money and experience than the outfit that restored THE STRANGER.

[Roger Ryan]

Well, we may have our answer as to why the "Film Chest" company was taking on their own HD restoration of THE STRANGER. Arts Alliance America, an independent distribution company, is releasing the film on Blu-ray in February...

http://www.amazon.com/The-Stranger-Blu- ... B004G9UXEE

Since this is not an MGM release (and Arts Alliance America is known for releasing Public Domain films), it will be interesting to see what the video quality is. I can only imagine what Welles would have thought about THE STRANGER being the very first of his directorial efforts to be released on Blu-ray!