I'm fond of the 1946 movie directed by Orson Welles, starring Welles, Loretta Young and Edward G. Robinson. It's gorgeous to look at, with those closeups that black and white does so well. Robinson is a Nazi hunter looking for Nazi's who slipped through the nets and disappeared in the U.S. Clues lead him to the perfect college town of Hartford, Connecticut. As in Hitchock's "Shadow of a Doubt", there is evil lurking behind the charming houses and lovely lawns. He suspects Charles Rankin, a professor and tinker with clocks, who is repairing the clock tower in the square. The Nazi Kindler was known to be fascinated with antique clocks, but Robinson really has no proof until someone turns up dead in the woods by the college. By this time Rankin has married Young, and though she senses something, she refuses to believe her new bridegroom is anything other than what he seems.
The cast is great, and the movie filled with small quiet moments that are just slightly off. It's creepy and fun at the same time. Welles makes a fine villain, and the danger to the wife, her brother, her father, and even her dog pulls us along a tense line of anxiety. I think of all that talent lost in whatever anxieties Orson Welles fought with over his short career. He ended up hidden beneath layers of fat, like Marlon Brando. His few jewels still shine, but what might he have directed and acted in haunts us like the early death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
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