Strangers in the Night

Strangers in the Night is an early and slight outing by legendary noir director Anthony Mann. Not even a full hour long and with a relatively unknown (or, at least, unremembered) cast, the Republic picture manages to tell a compelling story that winds from a wartime hospital in the South Pacific to a cliffside mansion overlooking the sea, including a genuinely shocking train crash in between. Having become pen pals with a strange woman named Rosemary (thanks to a book of poetry she donated to the Red Cross) while recuperating from battle wounds, Sergeant Johnny Meadows (William Terry) makes it his mission to track her down once he’s back in civilian clothes. When he finally arrives at her family estate, he encounters only Rosemary’s odd mother Hilda (Helene Thimig) and her live-in companion Ivy Miller (Edith Barrett); Rosemary is out of town, but her painted portrait towers over the parlor as an object of worship for Hilda. While waiting patiently for Rosemary’s return, Johnny forms a relationship with local doctor Leslie Ross (an excellent Virginia Grey), who, having recently visited the Blake household, believes there’s more than meets the eye to Rosemary’s absence. Mann’s inventiveness is already evident in this early film, utilizing low and high angles, slow pans, and unusual camera placements, such as inside a roaring fireplace and behind the bars of a bed headboard. Thimig is outstanding as the increasingly unsettled Hilda, her kindly, frail demeanor brilliantly incongruous with her domineering, menacing behavior.