ORSON WELLES
Bil’s rating (out of 5): BBBB.5.
USA, 1946. International Pictures. Story by , Screenplay by Adaptation by Victor Trivas, Cinematography by Produced by Sam Spiegel. Music by Bronislau Kaper. Production Design by Perry Ferguson. Costume Design by Michael Woulfe. Film Editing by Ernest J. Nims.
Exciting, absorbing drama that features a terrific screenplay and a first-rate cast. lets a Nazi war criminal of minor rank out of prison in the hopes that he will seek out his former leader, a mass murderer responsible for the design and execution of concentration camps who has gone undercover somewhere in America. The man turns out to be a stealthily hidden-in-plain-sight professor (Orson Welles) who, on the day that both the ex-convict and Robinson show up to find him, is about to be married to the lovely . Catching him red-handed, and getting his wife to believe the worst of him, are the main objectives for the heroes in this tale, but the playing out is complicated, fascinating and sometimes terrifying. Featuring the richest unveiling of the ugly underside of American small town life in the movies since Hitchcock’s Shadow Of A Doubt, this is one rip-snorting good film.
Academy Award Nomination: Best Original Motion Picture Story
Venice Film Festival: In Competition
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