As Donald Rumsfeld might have said, Stranger on the Third Floor is a well-known unknown. It's a small-time production, both in terms of its length (just over an hour) and cast - the notable exception being Peter Lorre, who later became a star, but here receives third billing in an early creepy role. Whilst unremarkable at face value, Stranger on the Third Floor (no-one is stranger than Lorre) has nevertheless been credited as the very first Film Noir. The film was released in 1940 and would've been an inexpensive B-movie crime thriller of the type required to fill up movie theatre schedules. But in retrospect, it's not difficult to see the Noir elements: cynical and dissatisfied characters subsist in an Expressionist world of light and shadow where dreams succumb to the hand of fate. Later Noir characters would be impacted by the war and its aftermath, but here mental illness is the dark antagonistic force. Lorre's stranger danger is delicious enough, but who would've expected Stranger on the Third Floor to present a feverish Hitchcockian nightmare a good 5 years before Spellbound? So big claims are made for this little film and whilst it's well-known to experts, it remains relatively unknown to everybody else - unless they happen to hear about it from an expert, like I did.Read full review
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