WHEN STRANGERS MARRY
US, 1943, 67 minutes, Black and white.
Robert Mitchum, Kim Hunter, Dean Jagger.
Directed by William Castle.
When Strangers Marry is a very brief murder mystery. It was one of the earliest films of Robert Mitchum who continued this style as villain or hero for over thirty years. It is also an early film of Kim Hunter. Dean Jagger looks very young at this stage of his career. The film in unsophisticated but has a certain gripping power especially when the audience realises it has been misjudging all along . The director was William Castle who made so many blunt horror thrillers throughout the 50s and 60s and then acted as a producer e.g. Rosemary's baby in the 60s and 70s.
He appeared as a movie director in the film The Day of the Locust.
1. The significance of the title and its explanation during the film? The film was retitled Betrayed. More appropriate? Irony?
2. The quality of the film as a small budget thriller made during the war? The stars at the beginning of their careers? The director and his subsequent reputation for unsubtle horror film? Were these ingredients there?
3. Audience interest in the film as mystery thriller? The techniques of showing people from the back, shadow? The concealment? The unsophisticated style of presentation, of dialogue? Many audiences laugh at the lack of sophistication. Does this detract or not from the impact of the thriller ?
4. The presentation of the murder situation? Audience presumptions and judgment? Themes of appearance and reality? The labels on the suitcase the telegrams, the presence of people at the hotel or not? The value of circumstantial evidence?
5. The focus of the film on Mildred? Audience identification with her? The introduction to her in the train as the happy newlywed, explanation of her story (and the humorous comment of the elderly married couple listening - and her reprisal of this at the end?) Background of her marrying, seeing Paul only a few times? What type of girl was she, from the mid-West going to the city, work as a waitress? How shrewd was she in character judgment? Would she have married a murderer? The tension in the sequences at her arrival at the hotel, the waiting, Fred and his dog and companionship? Going to the police? Going to the corner but Paul disappearing? Her exhilaration in finding him? Her response to the atmosphere of mystery about him? And the audience not noticing how Fred was manipulating the situation?
6. Audience response to Paul Baxter - as a type, the air of mystery, the presupposition that he was the murderer with so much money? Yet his friendly nature and kindness? His reaction to the nurse reading the paper to the old friend? His having matches from Philadelphia? His response to Mildred's leaving the theatre? Growing emphasis of
suspicion on him?
7. What motivated Mildred to go with him? Giving the wrong photo to the police? Getting the ticket to Louisville, the suspicion of the cab driver, going into the black bar, hiring the room? How well done were these small sequences to give an atmosphere of tension and plausibility?
8. The contrast with Fred and his pipe smoking, genial help, the dog, his job? His being told the story about the murderer by lieutenant Blake? The significance of his letter and its not arriving? When did the audience realise that he was the killer? Hie attempt to throw Mildred from the building? His reaction to her reading the letter? His trying to get rid of the money in the last mailof the night? His getting more and more frantic and his giving himself
away?
9. The attention to detail of the film even if unsophisticated? the character of the murdered man at the beginning as a lion flashing his money around and dropping it, his death, and the discovery by the maid? The character of the bar tender and his later appearances? What was going on in the black bar and the champion arriving back? The landlady and her daughter? The character of Blake and his plausible background to the story?
10. The romantic and happy ending? Appropriate for the ending of this kind of film?
