House of Strangers

In Joseph Mankiewicz’s House of Strangers, Edward G. Robinson plays Gino Moretti, an Italian immigrant, self-made banker, and father of four sons who compete for his affections, confidence, and business interests when he’s not forcing them to listen to Italian opera on the phonograph. The unshakeable Richard Conte plays Max, the favored son and an attorney who ends up defending his father in court when he’s accused of financial crimes (“Books is no way to run a bank!”) that torpedo the bank and disgrace the family name. While everything about the film feels like the mafia, including a couple of aborted attempts at fratricide, this is as much a family drama as a gangster story. Susan Hayward plays Max’s part-time girlfriend Irene Bennett, who symbolizes change just as Max’s pre-arranged fiancée Maria symbolizes tradition and the status quo. Mankiewicz and prolific noir cinematographer Milton Krasner make use of interesting camera angles and tracking shots, particularly the funereal flashback segue in which the camera ascends a staircase slowly while recorded opera leads us to Gino Moretti, still alive in the bathtub. As is so often the case, Conte is the powerhouse here whose natural confidence and ambiguous integrity carry the narrative so compellingly; had he been born a generation later, Conte’s star might outshine De Niro’s and Pacino’s today.