Talk About A Stranger

Dir. David Bradley

65 Minutes

USA

1952

Starring: George Murphy, Nancy Reagan, Billy Gray, Lewis Stone, Kurt Kasznar

***1/2/*****

Unsuspectingly interesting B-noir picture (a sub-genre discussed by Eddie Muller as "kid noir", citing The Window, Shadow on the Wall, and, naturally, The Night of the Hunter) about a boy who grows obsessed with proving that his mysterious neighbor has poisoned his new dog. While the film is a thinly veiled allegory for McCarthy "witch hunt" politics (with a moral of being careful not to judge people on the outside contributing to the somber conclusion), it is fascinating piece of work even on the surface, probably heavily in debt to John Alton's beautiful cinematography that elevates the "B" aspects into something incredibly artful and hypnotic to watch (the climactic sequence has some individual images that call to mind the great cinematography of the later Hunter). The narrative is told entirely from the perspective of young Bud (Billy Gray), and the way his character is able to move around the frame from observer to participant is striking in its experiments with perspective (most notably during a scene in a pharmacy where various residents talk about what they know about the "mystery man" Matlock). And even as the narrative becomes more complex with Bud's investigation and assumptions about Matlock, the picture retains an elegant simplicity that carries it to the conclusion of a tight sixty-five minute running time.

Some of its elements do border on the grating with some "wishy-washy" portraits of Americana (and Gray can be a bit of an irritating presence as he shifts from his "oh-gee" persona to that of a persistent investigator), but Bradley is interesting in the way he depicts community and small town inhabitants. There is some real texture to the ensemble nature of the film, even if it involves characters that only briefly appear, and when they come together near the end for a common goal the image is quite striking in its menace. Perhaps these are not people who are able to stand out much on their own, but when brought together as a unit there is a real fierceness to the created entity. And the concluding scenes have a nice melancholy to them that gives the previous moments some gravity. It is an intriguing picture and one that can easily slip through the cracks as yet another MGM "B-quickie", but, as the film implicitly states, appearances are not quite that simple.

January 20th, 2020