Forasteiro da Noite

A seriously wounded Marine is given the will to live again through letters from a girl he's never met. He arranges to go and visit her when he's home on leave. Aboard a train to where Rosemary lives he mistakenly thinks for a moment that their paths have physically crossed before he arrives. A woman sitting opposite is carrying a copy of 'A Shropshire Lad' book of poems by Alfred Edward Houseman. That is the very book that had brought about the correspondence between the marine and Rosemary.

The woman on the train is Dr Ross who has just become the doctor for Rosemary's household. As Johnny the Marine is about to explain his mistake to Dr Ross the train crashes and many of the passengers are in need of her medical treatment. This brings these two strangers close and romance would have seemed to have blossomed if it wasn't Johnny's love for Rosemary who had saved his life through those letters. But Rosemary is not at home when Johnny finally gets to his destination.

Rosemary's house is on a remote clifftop. There lives Rosemary's mother and her nervous companion Ivy Miller. Rosemary becomes a mystery and her disabled mother is shown to be the kind who may live in a fantasy world for some reason. Tension builds as 'Rosemary's mother' becomes capable of endangering others in her bid to keep the romance between her daughter and Johnny alive. Not one moment is lost in this deft telling of a poor deranged woman who needs to imagine an alternative reality for herself.

"Strangers in the Night" is a very unusual B-movie. It's a bizarre story about a seriously deranged old lady, Mrs. Blake and the weird secret she hides.

When the story begins, Dr. Ross (Virginia Grey) is introducing herself to the folks in the seaside community where she'll be taking over for the old doctor. However, when she meets Mrs. Blake (Helene Thiming), the old woman is overtly hostile towards her...inexplicably so.

Soon after this, Dr. Ross is on a train and meets Sgt. Meadows (William Terry). It seems he is headed to the same small town where Ross now works...and he's going to the Blake household to see Mrs. Blake's lovely daughter. It seems that when he was off fighting in the war, he corresponded with the lady and he's totally smitten with her. However, once he arrives at the Blake household, they inform Terry that she isn't there. And, they invite him to stay until she returns. However, days pass and it's obvious something is going on here...and the return of the girl seems to very, very vague.

In the meantime, Mrs. Blake's nervous housekeeper, Ivy (Edith Barrett) knows some sort of secret and seems to always be on the verge of telling the Doctor. What is the secret? And how does it relate to the missing daughter? And, what does a painting of the lady have to do with all this?

I really loved this film. While most folks think all B-movies are bad movies, they are not. A true B is a short film (about an hour in length) and is usually cheaply made. The purpose of the film is to be the second film in a double feature--with the A (or prestige picture) being accompanied by this B. But just because a film is short and often hastily made doesn't mean it's bad...and "Strangers in the Night" is simply terrific. In fact, it's one of the best Bs I have ever seen. The writing and acting and direction all work together perfectly and the solution to the mystery is sufficiently dark and sick to satisfy. Well worth seeing and Helene Thiming is simply terrific as this sick, disturbed and nasty old 'lady'!

My score of 9 is because the film is so good and because of how it compares to other Bs....and it's head and shoulders better than about 99% of them.

It's a dark movie - literally. At the first look at the vileness Hilda Blake (Helen Thimig) you will probably think: this is very bad acting. Than you realize Mrs Thiming is a great actress and that Hilda is a very scary character. There is an interesting romance between a soldier and a woman doctor suffering with a little community prejudice. All the action happens around a very big picture of a beautiful young woman, and the sinister Hilda give orders all the time to her submissive "friend" Ivy Miller (Edith Barrett). It's a pity that in the end the screenplay turns a little dumb in important details. This is the sixth film from Anthony Mann, and its style reminds me the very early Alfred Hichcock.

I'm actually surprised that this movie hasn't resurfaced as a kind of cult classic in recent years of the digital age. We are all familiar with social media and what "catfishing" is. Strangers In The Night is a wonderfully eerie catfishing tale as it would have taken place in the 1940s before social media. In a way the movie was ahead of its time. For being just under an hour long, though, it sure does have a lot of story packed into it. There's also a feminist element to it (female doctor).

Anthony Mann's brief (56 mins!) is a lightly enjoyable thriller that is more old house mystery than strict Noir (even if it's often pitched as one). William Terry plays Sgt. Meadows, a WWII vet, who returns stateside to finally meet the girl of his dreams who he's only known through the letters they exchange while he was in the South Pacific. Virginia Grey plays a -- (better sit down for this) WOMAN doctor named Dr. Ross! They meet cute on a train. When the Sergeant gets to the secluded cliff side mansion of his pen pal, she's not home. Instead, he is met by her grumpy mother Hilda (Helene Thimig) and a mousy live-in housekeeper (Edith Barrett). At under an hour, there isn't much time for true intrigue (and the mystery isn't all that difficult to decipher), but Grey, Thimig and Barrett all deliver entertaining performances. Mann keeps it moving, the script based on a Philip MacDonald story is dotty fun and Reggie Lanning's camerawork is suitably moody. Mann made much better true Noirs like RAW DEAL and BORDER INCIDENT, but, STRANGERS isn't a bad time killer. And, a pretty good title song by Sinatra to boot. :)