Search - Stranger/Cause for Alarm on DVD

Stranger/Cause for Alarm
Genres: Mystery & Suspense

NR 2003 1hr 25min

There isn't much to connect these two features beyond the general umbrella of film noir and the presence of Loretta Young (hardly a noir icon), but the Roan Group's collection features excellent prints of both of these oft... more »en poorly represented classics. The clean, sharp pictures and clear sound show these two films off at their best. The legendary story that hovers over Orson Welles's The Stranger is that he wanted Agnes Moorehead to star as the dogged Nazi hunter who trails a war criminal to a sleepy New England town. The part went to E.G. Robinson, who is marvelous, but it points out how many compromises Welles made on the film in an attempt to show Hollywood he could make a film on time, on budget, and on their own terms. He accomplished all three, turning out a stylish if unambitious film noir thriller, his only Hollywood film to turn a profit on its original release. Welles stars as unreformed fascist Franz Kindler, hiding as a schoolteacher in a New England prep school for boys and newly married to the headmaster's lovely if naive daughter (Loretta Young). Welles the director is in fine form for the opening sequences, casting a moody tension as agents shadow a twitchy low-level Nazi official skulking through South American ports and building up to dramatic crescendo as Kindler murders this little man, the lovely woods becoming a maelstrom of swirling leaves that expose the body he furiously tries to bury. The rest of film is a well-designed but conventional cat-and-mouse game featuring an eye-rolling performance by Welles and a thrilling conclusion played out in the dark clock tower that looms over the little village. In Cause for Alarm, Loretta Young is an elegantly tailored happy homemaker caring for her invalid husband (Barry Sullivan), a former pilot suffering from a mysterious heart disease that has driven him to almost complete madness. Convinced his wife and his doctor are in collusion to kill him, he's carefully recorded the "evidence" of their crime in a letter to the district attorney and prepares to turn the tables on them, but even his own sudden death can't stop the chain of events that plunges his wife into a waking nightmare. An unusual entry into the film noir school of paranoia, Tay Garnett's melodramatic thriller trades the dark alleys and long shadows of urban menace for the sunny, tree-lined streets of middle-class domesticity. Young, so often cool, calm, and carefully coifed in her studio roles, beautifully evokes the American Dream as the dutiful wife who collapses into a state of hysterical desperation. Spinning a web of lies to retrieve the damning letter, her world falls apart around her as she unwittingly sinks herself deeper into a morass of suspicion and circumstantial evidence. Though this is less slick and stylish than his claim to film noir fame The Postman Always Rings Twice, Garnett spins a simple premise into a tense, terrifying ordeal, and Young's deadened narration adds an eerie mood of doom to the suburban setting. --Sean Axmaker

Movie Details

Genres: Mystery & Suspense
Sub-Genres: Mystery & Suspense
Studio: Roan Group/Rv
Format: DVD - Black and White
DVD Release Date: 02/04/2003
Original Release Date: 01/01/1946
Theatrical Release Date: 01/01/1946
Release Year: 2003
Run Time: 1hr 25min
Screens: Black and White
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaDVD Credits: 1
Total Copies: 0
Members Wishing: 3
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Languages: English
See Also:

Film Noir Vol. 1: The Stranger/Cause For Alarm

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Movie Reviews

Roan DVD is 95 min version, not 85 minutes.

videophile | Gainesville, FL United States | 03/02/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The Roan Group DVD, "Film Noir #1: The Stranger/Cause for Alarm" has the 95 minute version of the Stranger. Great transfer and a great film. You also get Loretta Young in "Cause for Alarm" on the other side. Watta deal!"

The missing two minutes is no cause for alarm

Rudolf Schmid | Kensington, CA | 04/02/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This two-sided DVD by Roan Group is region 0 and contains two classic noir films: the excellent and widely available The stranger (1946), and the melodramatic and rarely seen Cause for Alarm (1951). This DVD is by far the best region 0/1 version available of The stranger and the only DVD version currently available of Cause for Alarm. Both versions are excellent: sharp images, with excellent contrast and very good blacks and whites. Both films have some scratches and dropouts, but these are not especially objectionable. This DVD version of The stranger is the best I've seen and reputedly only slightly inferior to the region 2 (UK) MGM version.

Neither film on the Roan DVD has menus or any extras. The stranger is divided into 20 chapters, Cause for Alarm into 16.

The stranger runs a full 95 minutes. Cause for alarm is supposed to run 74 minutes. The version on the Roan Group DVD actually runs 71 minutes and 44 seconds. Apparently the missing footage is at the beginning of chapter 4 (TT18.10), which begins abruptly. This DVD originally listed for $29.95 but lately has had a list price of $9.95. I recently obtained the latter version, which has been remaindered (closed out). Reportedly a new version of this DVD will be available to restore the two minutes of footage missing from Cause for Alarm. However, the present version of The stranger is fine and at $9.95 list, or less, this DVD is a great buy considering its overall image quality."