Peter Lorre is top-billed but he’s really just the seasoning in Stranger on the Third Floor, often described as the first film noir.
Lorre owed RKO a couple of days on his contract and so got shoe-horned into Boris Ingster’s directorial debut, bumping John McGuire from poll position. The film doesn’t need Lorre to work, but he adds off-whack flavour to the portrayal of an escaped lunatic – a scant handful of scenes, not that much to get excited about.
In 64 tight minutes, Ingster, cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca and writer Frank Partos do two remarkable things. First, they make a thematic break with the crime movies that came before to deliver an indictment of the system of criminal (in)justice in the USA – this is not a film about gangsters toting machine guns. Second, they create a style sheet for noirs to come – urban settings, voiceover, stark lighting and evocative shadows – with off-kilter angles and fantasy cutaways lifted from German expressionism as an extra visual bonus.
So forget Lorre. Instead focus on McGuire, who plays a journalist who’s just got a raise off the back of his reports on a murder trial where he was the key witness. The man in the dock has been convicted on his say-so. But did Mike Ward (McGuire) really see him at the scene of the crime? On top of this terrible conflict of interest, there’s the whole plea-bargaining system – the convicted man (played by Elisha Cook Jr) is heading for the death penalty.
Margaret Tallichet plays Mike’s fiancée Jane, who can see what’s wrong with this picture long before Mike can, and urges him to think again. And again. Mike and Jane, these are boring names for boring characters and there’s not much McGuire and Tallichet can do to enliven what are essentially placeholder roles, characters taking different positions as an ethical conundrum is worked through.
“Pretentious” was the general verdict when Stranger on the Third Floor first came out in 1940, with the lighting of Nicholas Musuraca copping much of the flak. It’s one of the chief reasons to watch now, that and Van Nest Polglase’s production design. Both come into their own as the guilt or otherwise of Cook Jr’s everyman Joe Briggs is called into question, and other suspects are brought into play. Maybe Mike is the murderer? What about the titular Stranger, played by Lorre? Off-whack angles, chiaroscuro lighting, grotesque distortions, mad shadows, Musuraca and Polglase go to town, while in the music department Roy Webb adds on discordant ascending strings to up the sense of unease, disease even.
RKO clearly thought nothing of the film, or they wouldn’t have cast McGuire, who was playing uncredited roles within two years of being the lead here. Tallichet, lean and attractive, makes more of an impression, but she gave up acting after marrying director William Wyler. Lorre drags all the attention his way once he starts showing up, though the casting round the edges is strong throughout – Michael’s nosy neighbour, Mr Meng (what a name) played by Charles Halton, and his prying landlady, played by Ethel Griffies, make a fine double act and add comic relief.
How lackadaisical the administration of justice is in this movie. What sort of system convicts on the evidence of a man who had a clear motive for making it all up? In the end the guilt or otherwise of Briggs becomes a sideshow. The main event is the mood conjured, one of curdling certainty and suspicion. Nicely done.
Stranger on the Third Floor – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
