Stranger on the Third Floor

Generally regarded as one of the first films to combine all the noir elements (visual, narrative, thematic) into an ideal specimen of the style, Boris Ingster’s Stranger on the Third Floor features one of the most visually stunning dream sequences of the cycle (in fact, the whole film plays like one long, hazy dream). Released a full year before Citizen Kane, Ingster’s film quite certainly influenced the latter film’s director and helped invent the visual style that some might call Wellesian. The great Peter Lorre stars as an escaped mental patient, but John McGuire has all the screen time as protagonist Michael Ward, a journalist whose witness testimony in a murder trial results in the conviction and planned execution of Joe Briggs (Elisha Cook, Jr.), who desperately denies his involvement. When Ward’s fiancée Jane (Margaret Tallichet) questions his recollections, he becomes consumed by guilt until encountering a stranger (Lorre) who’s been skulking around his building and may be the real murderer. The story is straightforward, but the plotting, cinematography, and Lorre’s performance make for a thrilling, hour-long ride. While the groundbreaking dream sequence is the visual centerpiece, Ingster packs the film with dramatic camera angles, low-key lighting, and novel blocking, which together create one of the film’s most iconic and suspenseful scenes in which Ward confronts the stranger in his stairwell.