Three Strangers

It was over 20 years ago that I first encountered this small cinematic treasure, on the now-defunct indie KHJ-TV, channel 9 in Los Angeles, but it was not at all by accident. Having been enthralled by the magic that is "Casablanca" some years before, I had been seeking out other films like it made by Warner Bros. in the late 30s, 40s and early 50s. Specifically I was after more work by that classic's storied supporting cast: Paul Henried, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Claude Rains, S.Z. Sakall and Joy Page, among others.

"Three Strangers" gathers two of those and weaves them into a unexpectedly amoral tale of the cost of reversing fortune. Lorre plays a fallen gentleman who fallen into a bottle and thus into some dicey company, while Greenstreet plays a solicitor who's been a tad too speculative with his trust accounts. The underregarded Geraldine Fitzgerald joins them as the mysterious woman who randomly gathers the other two off a London street to see if they'll take a chance on an ancient Chinese proverb coming true.

"Three Strangers" if anything goes "Casablanca" and that other Huston/Lorre/Greenstreet classic, "The Maltese Falcon," one better in the world-weariness department, with moral ambiguities and ambivalent characters straight out of films noir made five years later. Unlike those other two films, though, there's little likability to be found in the lead characters' roguishness --- save perhaps for Lorre, who gets redeemed by a "good" woman's love at the end.

Yet that very fact makes "Three Strangers" play out like a much more modern film (like one from the early 1970s, say), rendering it an intriguing admixture of old-style character-driven plotting and contemporary moral waywardness and antiheroism.

The time is 1938 London before the World War. A woman of mystery, Geraldine Fitzgerald, invites two perfect strangers played by Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet up to her apartment. She's a believer in the ancient Chinese god of Kwan Lin and it's said that if Three Strangers wish on that deity and their's is the same wish it will be granted. In this case the wish is money and it's in the form of a sweepstakes ticket that Peter Lorre has purchased and who gives two thirds away to Fitzgerald and Greenstreet in the hope of fortune coming their way.

After this we see a glimpse of the lives of the three people. Lorre is a petty criminal who's gotten himself into a beautiful jackpot being accused of a murder that he didn't commit. Fitzgerald is a shrewish wife who stays married to an unhappy Alan Napier who just wants to be free to marry Marjorie Riordan. This is a harbinger of a role that Fitzgerald really perfected a dozen years later in Ten North Frederick. As for Greenstreet, he's a solicitor, an attorney of no great significance in the legal profession, an English version of a man whose name I was once threatened with named Abe Hecht. It's now become a synonym for cheap shysters with me. Anyway Greenstreet's the trustee of an estate he's been dipping into. He wants to make a financial killing real bad because he thinks that money will buy him respectability which he craves like nothing else.

The film is like a 90 minute version of a Twilight Zone episode, but that's not a putdown because some really classic stuff was done on that program. The script was written by Howard Koch and John Huston and directed by Jean Negulesco. I'm surprised Huston did not want to direct this one himself, but Jean Negulesco got some of the best performances that members of the cast ever gave on screen, especially from the three leads.

Notice no really big movie names are in this cast, no leading men screen legends. That may have been an asset to the film because it concentrates on the story and the characters created. The ironic fates of all three of the sweepstakes ticket sharers could have come right out of the imaginative mind of Rod Serling. And Peter Lorre is actually allowed a little romance in a movie. That alone makes Three Strangers absolutely priceless.

Three Strangers is a B picture gem, one of those low budget sleepers that Hollywood puts out to great critical acclaim that turn a profit because of the low budget. And this review is dedicated to that attorney Abe Hecht whom I never met and to his idiot brother-in-law Morris Stetch who threatened me with him back in 1979. To see if Greenstreet obtains the status of a Clarence Darrow and rises from Abe Hechtdom, don't miss Three Strangers.

Why is Three Strangers, a 1946 movie, set in the London in 1938? There's nothing in the story that links it to a particular time. But in 1938, Britain had yet to be drawn into the long and arduous war to come, when gallantry and self-sacrifice were the orders of the day. The characters in Three Strangers are mirthlessly ungallant and single-mindedly self-absorbed; relegating them to the fool's paradise of the year before all hell broke loose was a diplomatic courtesy.

But a movie centered around three unappealing characters presents another, more immediate problem: The problems they bring on themselves do not compel much sympathy. The movie opens before midnight as the Chinese New Year is about to strike. Geraldine Fitzgerald has been trolling the streets to bring two strangers (Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre) back to her flat. Her quest is not sexual but ritualistic: The Chinese goddess of fortune, a statue of whom graces her drawing room, requires the gathering of three persons unknown to one another before she will grant her annual wish. When all the conditions and codicils have been duly haggled over, the three agree to wish for a winning sweepstakes ticket.

Then they part ways to return to their separate hells. The grasping, manipulative Fitzgerald has driven away her husband, who returns from Canada with a young woman he wants to marry. The avaricious Greenstreet, a solicitor, has been plundering his clients' accounts to speculate in stocks. The alcoholic Lorre (by default the least offensive of the trio) finds himself on death row for a policeman's murder committed by one of his low-life friends who framed him. Their individual stories unfold and, in ironies reminiscent of de Maupassant or O. Henry, ultimately reconverge. As expected, Jean Negulesco directs handsomely but can't overcome the emotional vacuum in John Huston's script: The fates of these three strangers leave us cold.

Three Strangers is not a typical Hollywood film. Dark and philosophical, it introduces the viewer to three people, strangers to one another, and then follows their sad, desperate lives. While one reviewer on this site says it's a shame they don't make movies like this anymore, the fact is, they almost never made movies like this back then. This is far less neat and more philosophical than your typical 40s flick, a movie about strange twists of fate and the ways in which people fail to take responsibility for their actions.

The cast is excellent, with Peter Lorre particularly impressive in one of the best performances of his career as an alcoholic who thinks too much and does too little. I was also quite taken by Joan Lorring's touchingly vulnerable performance as a girl in with the wrong crowd.

Admittedly the ending ties things up in a neat little bow, yet for the most part this movie is far closer in spirit to the indie movies of the 1990s than to the film noirs of the 1940s it could be mistaken for.

A very literate script by John Huston and Howard Koch makes this one worth seeing. Only after the initial intriguing premise is set in motion do we discover to our amusement that all the characters we've become interested in are fairly despicable, particularly Geraldine Fitzgerald as a sociopath and nymphomaniac. With the unusually well observed character details provided by the script and the use of many supporting and bit actors one hasn't seen in lots of other pictures, THREE STRANGERS really has something of the atmosphere of London in 1938 rather than of London-via-Hollywood.

And make no mistake: Despite good direction by Jean Negulesco, John Huston's cynicism, pessimism and misogyny are evident everywhere, and that alone makes this unusual in a '40s picture. Like MALTESE FALCON it is a black comedy about greed, but it has no big stars, no glamor, and only the sliest, cruelest humor. Add the perfectly judged performances of everyone in this film, and it adds up to a neglected near-classic, one that seemed to predict the funnier and more elegant KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS.

As the real star of the film, Peter Lorre is wonderfully wry and quite lovable as one of life's eternal losers. Sydney Greenstreet often played nasty men deliciously but here he takes his character's weakness and pettiness much further than usual, and his scenes of escalating madness are very effective. Geraldine Fitzgerald's portrait of an amoral seductress is different than what she usually played at Warners, and should be considered some kind of '40s milestone in the depiction of depraved women alongside Gene Tierney in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN and Agnes Moorehead in DARK PASSAGE. She's aided by some very form-fitting Milo Anderson gowns, one of which, a pleated satin negligee, was recycled in black for Patricia Neal in THE FOUNTAINHEAD a few years later. It looks great in both incarnations. In smaller parts Peter Whitney makes an impression as a soft-hearted (and homosexual?) crony of Lorre's, and Rosalind Ivan is memorable as a dotty widow who is much shrewder than she appears. Finally, the casting of Fitzgerald, Marjorie Riordan and Joan Lorring (who looks like a young Irene Selznick) is curious: all three young women have prominent noses, darkly painted lips and very dark, shoulder-length hair which is styled similarly. And as each character descends in economic scale, her looks are heavier and plainer. Another comment on how fickle fortune can be? Anne Sharp's comment below that the characters are meant to illustrate the dark forces that enabled WWII is interesting and valuable.

By the way, the print shown on TCM is rather dim, sketchy and full of harsh contrasts so it's hard to judge what the film was actually meant to look like. Whoever now owns the Warner Bros. library should strike a pristine version of this one.