Movies - Stranger on the Third Floor

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	Movies - Stranger on the Third Floor

Stranger on the Third Floor is a 1940 film noir. Director - Boris Ingster, Screenplay - Frank Partos, Producer - Lee Marcus, Photography (b&w) - Nicholas Musuraca, Music - Roy Webb, Special Effects - Vernon L. Walker, Art Direction - Van Nest Polglase. Production Company - RKO Radio Pictures.

Plot

Reporter Michael Ward is the key witness in a murder trial. His evidence - that he saw the accused Briggs standing over the body of a man in a diner - is instrumental in having Briggs deemed guilty. But afterwards Ward’s fiancee Jane is worried whether Ward was correct in what he saw and Ward becomes haunted by this question. Next Ward’s neighbour is killed the same way as the man in the diner. But Ward is arrested for trying to point this out to the police. And so Jane goes out to try and clear Ward by finding the sinister stranger that Ward saw on the stairwell.

Reaction

The film is well received today by critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an 80% fresh rating.

Upon it's release in 1940, New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther called the film pretentious: "John McGuire and Margaret Tallichet, as the reporter and his girl, are permitted to act half-way normal, it is true. But in every other respect, including Peter Lorre's brief role as the whack, it is utterly wild. The notion seems to have been that the way to put a psychological melodrama across is to pile on the sound effects and trick up the photography."

Dave Kehr, writing for the Chicago Reader calls the film "An RKO B-film from 1940, done up in high Hollywood expressionism. It's absurdly overwrought (which was often the problem with the German variety), but interesting for it. The director, Boris Ingster, is better with shadows than with actors--venetian blinds carve up the characters with more fateful force than Paul Schrader's similar gambit in American Gigolo
, and there's a dream sequence that has to be seen to be disbelieved."

Featured cast

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