Love from a Stranger (1937)

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The acting in this movie is really good.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

"Love From A Stranger" is notable as one of the first film adaptations of Agatha Christie's work, and certainly the earliest that is commercially available today. The first three quarters of its length are not too thrilling (they are a little padded - the script was based on a short Christie story, after all), and Basil Rathbone's eyebrow-raising gives away his evil intentions too early (to be more specific, at the scene where he gets Ann Harding to sign the papers about their new house), but the last 20 minutes will have you glued to your seat. I would go as far as describing them as a masterclass in building screen suspense. Also fun to watch a young Joan Hickson, one of the future Miss Marples, playing someone on the opposite side of the intellectual spectrum. **1/2 out of 4.

"Love from a Stranger" (original title) AKA "A Night of Terror" (1937). Basil Rathbone goes insane, Ann Harding falls in-love - and I loved every minute of the film. This one is a good crime thriller based on a romance - great climax! Carol Howard seems to be one lucky but highly naive woman - she wins the lottery but ends up loosing her childhood sweetheart Ronald Bruce due to the money going to her head Ronald felt, besides he wanted to be the one to get her out of the slums and to marry her. Carol wants to take her money and go on a trip to France with her best friend Kate Meadows and Aunt Lou. She wants to someone in her flat while she's away and a man arrives to take over the place - Gerald Lovell. Carol and her friends board a ship to set sail and she bumps into Gerald Lovell who starts wooing her. Carol and Gerald marry much to the dismay of Ronald Bruce. The newlyweds buy a home and move in - that's when Carol starts seeing Gerald's true colors. 8.5/10

LOVE FROM A STRANGER sounds like a TV courtroom melodrama, yet it evokes the charm and spontaneity of the British between—the—wars cinema sometimes nostalgically evoked by Hitchcock—a sort of freedom and originality and unpretentiousness. Mrs. Harding—what a delicious woman and actress, what a funny blonde! …And the Hoffmanesque cellar scenes, brightly scored! The score is by Britten; the precarious technique affects the sound's quality, the dialogs are rather badly taken, sometimes hard to understand.Such movies are amusing almanacs of funny bits and small inventiveness.Rathbone was the villainous, threatening version of Flynn. A better actor, one might say.The hypocrisy of men was illustrated in cinema by Grant, Cotten, Mitchum, with roles in movies about women being manipulated and used,of trust betrayed, and Cave sang about the victims of others' malice.Mrs. Harding produces instantly a very good impression, as a most fine person.

Agatha Christie had a hard time with the movie adaptations of her works. Prior to the astounding success of MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS in the 1970s, only two film adaptations of her works had been done well: the 1944 version of AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, and (beyond that) the 1957 version of WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION. The former was done by the French film director Rene Clair, and the latter by Billy Wilder, and both were well cast. But those were like exceptions to the general rule. WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION had a memorable performance of Charles Laughton as the cagey old barrister Sir Wilfred Robarts (ably assisted by his nurse, played by Laughton's wife Elsa Lanchester). But in the early 1930s an early English talkie was made of ALIBI, a play based on THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD. Laughton had made a name for himself on stage as Hercule Poirot in that play, and was repeating the role for film. Christie saw the finished result and wondered if she should allow her other stories to be made into movies! In 1937 Christie allowed a play she wrote, "Philomel Cottage" to be made into a film. The film was retitled LOVE FROM A STRANGER, and starred Ann Harding as a lonely young woman who wins a fortune in a lottery. Soon she meets a fascinating, sophisticated gentleman played by Basil Rathbone, who sweeps her off her feet and marries her. But his charms begin to frazzle after marriage - he insists on them moving to the cottage (of the play's title) which is in an out-of-the-way location, and he slowly drives away all her friends. As she realizes how isolated she is, she begins to wonder what is the real personality of the man she has married: is he moody or is he actually planning to murder her for her money.Although not handled by a director of the caliber of Clair or Wilder (or of ORIENT EXPRESS' Sidney Lumet), LOVE FROM A STRANGER benefited from the hand of Rowland Lee, an expert director of melodrama and detective films. Lee wisely kept to the story, and allowed Rathbone to play one of his best villains. Basil is a fortune hunter and "Bluebeard" like Henri Landru or George Joseph Smith. He has more polish than the average killer: witness his abilities to order a first rate dinner early in the film for Harding and himself, including choosing the fine wine involved. He also is quite in love with his accomplishments. When the neighborhood doctor and he are discussing murder cases the former mentions one in South America where the killer defended himself and got off, and left the jurisdiction just before the evidence that would have convicted him turned up. Rathbone says that killer was brilliant, and was really something else. Of course, as it turns out, that killer was Rathbone.Harding balances him, trying to keep her suspicions under control and trying to counter all of Rathbone's various schemes so that she can stay alive. It becomes a literal battle to the death between the two of them.LOVE FROM A STRANGER lacks the production values of AND THEN THERE WERE NONE and WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, but it has two sturdy performances and good directing behind it. It is the best of the pre-1944 Christie films. In 1947 it would be remade (with the same title) with John Hodiak and Sylvia Sidney and John Howard, although no longer treated as a modern story but set back in the 1890s.One final point. The supporting cast included David Calthrop (who frequently was in British movies in this period), and Jean Cadell. But one name in the cast is rather ironic. Joan Hickson had an early role in this film. In the 1980s the B.B.C. discovered in Ms Hickson the first woman to play the role of Miss Jane Marple (pace Margaret Rutherford and Angela Lansbury) as Christie had written the role. Hickson would appear in nearly a dozen small screen multi-episode productions in the 1980s and 1990s before her death in 1998. Her performances as Miss Marple remain a standard to match all others in that role.