Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)

[JohnChard]

A stranger on the stairwell, a weirdo in the mind.

Stranger on the Third Floor is directed by Boris Ingster and co-written by Frank Partos and Nathanael West. It stars Peter Lorre, John McGuire, Margaret Tallichet and Elisha Cook Jr. Music is by Roy Webb and cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca.

Michael Ward is a news reporter who is the key witness in a murder trial. His evidence, circumstantial at best, is instrumental in getting a guilty verdict delivered on suspect Joe Briggs (Cook Jr.). When his girlfriend Jane (Tallichet) casts doubt over Briggs’ guilt, and his part in the evidence, Michael becomes haunted by the fact he may have sent an innocent man to death row. Things further compound his troubled mind as a sinister stranger is lurking around his rooming house building……

Often referred to as the first true film noir picture, Stranger on the Third Floor hardly set the cinematic world alight upon its release. With Lorre the draw card barely in it and its production value no more than that of a B movie programmer, it’s not hard to envisage some of those 1940’s critics stroking their beards and pondering how to write about such a film. Aesthetically the film caused some consternation, too, while the snarky aside to the legal system, and the people involved in such, adds some intrigue into the narrative mix. For a film running at just over an hour, it was doing well to make a mark: favourably or otherwise!

The truth is is that at its core, Ingster’s film is no more than a capably acted crime thriller, but what cloaks that core are hugely impressive visuals that paint a skew whiff world of a paranoid mind at work. The script, while light as spoken, does indeed carry cynicism, but this aspect only impacts because of the expressionistic visuals and baroque like imagery. Characters, and the actors playing them, ultimately are playing second fiddle to style over substance, but in this instance it’s ok. With Musuraca weaving his photographic magic around heavy shadows, stilted angles and high contrast framing, film contains one of the greatest dream/nightmare sequences to have ever graced/dominated film noir. This alone makes the film essential viewing for noir enthusiasts.

The ending is all too swift and contrived, distastefully accompanied by the jolly old music that opened up the piece. But again this is forgiven in light of what has gone before it, for now, nothing can be seen in quite the same way. A most interesting and sneaky little picture this one. 7.5/10

[MartinTeller]

(review from 5/22/11)

This one is sometimes referred to as the "first true film noir". Released in 1940, I would say it certainly is a contender. With a deep cynicism (about the indifference of the criminal justice system), rich chiaroscuro lighting and Peter Lorre as a creepy lurker and a small role for Elisha Cook, Jr., it fits the bill. But what an eccentric film. The performances are off-kilter, even borderline crazy. The pacing is very unusual, the film takes a lengthy diversion as John McGuire agonizes via voiceover, and then a long dream sequence that's a near-masterpiece of expressionism. It's just a weird movie, one that almost seems "bad" but is still fascinating. It really creeps under your skin, aided by some amazing visuals. Rating: 8

[JohnChard]

Hi Martin

Just wanted to let you know I have been reading your posts, we don't always agree, which of course is healthy, but I've enjoyed your mini reviews.

Cheers

[MartinTeller]

Hey, thanks! Yeah, my reviews are definitely "mini"! I'd like to do more in-depth reviews some of you guys do, but it's just not my style. I like to cut to the chase

[NOTW comment bot: comments from Noiroftheweek.com]

Most film noirs of the 1940s endings were Deus Ex Machina. That was the nature of Hollywood in the 1940s. Also plots in most noirs, just like this one, have little importance. I'd personally take Michael's paranoid dream sequence over anything in The Maltese Falcon.

comment by Anonymous



This comment was made at Noiroftheweek.com.



2012-06-12T02:30:21.364-05:00

[Steve-O]

Most film noirs of the 1940s endings were Deus Ex Machina. That was the nature of Hollywood in the 1940s. Also plots in most noirs, just like this one, have little importance. I'd personally take Michael's paranoid dream sequence over anything in The Maltese Falcon.

comment by Anonymous



This comment was made at Noiroftheweek.com.



2012-06-12T02:30:21.364-05:00

The comment above is referencing the NOTW piece which we don't have posted here...

it's referencing this comment:

giospurs6:11 PM, September 08, 2010

If the film really is credited as being the first Film Noir then you have to give it some credit but, apart from that the film is excruciatingly bad. The cinematography is quite striking, with lots of long shadows but, like the rest of the film lacks any subtlety. The great film noirs like The Maltese Falcon are characterised not just by their style, but the great plotting. This film just didn't have a plot. It's all coincidence, and the ending is a shameful Deus Ex Machina. Awful, awful film.

[Nighthawk]

As most fans of the genre know, French film critics first applied the term “film noir” retroactively in the 1960s as they looked back on films from the 40s and 50s and found that many of them contained a unique visual style, often influenced by German Expressionism, that worked in combination with especially dark and frequently fatal thematic material to create a type of film unique unto itself. These films, such critics argued, could be grouped together into a genre called noir. Over time, the idea of a genre (or cycle) of noir films that contain a set of common markers and were produced exclusively between 1940 and 1958—give or take a few years on the back end—made its way across the Atlantic and is now universally accepted as a valid interpretation of a specific movement within the overarching history of film.

As scholars of the genre have attempted to determine what films quality as noir, they almost always agree that the one-hour RKO B programmer Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) is the first of its kind. (The contrarian position often argues—erroneously—that the 1939 film Blind Alley should hold that distinction.) What seems both remarkable and fitting is that the genre was born from such inauspicious beginnings. The film was directed by Boris Ingster, a first-time filmmaker who only directed three films in his entire career—one of the two others being the 1950 noir Southside 1-1000. Peter Lorre, who would have been best known as the detective Mr. Moto in a series of programmers for 20th Century Fox, received top billing, even though in 1940, he was still very much a mid-level B player; he still had one more year to go until he, Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet would all hit pay dirt with John Huston’s first feature, The Maltese Falcon (1941). But for a man who was ostensibly the star, Lorre has less than ten minutes of total screen time in Stranger and doesn’t speak until the final ten minutes of the film. He only took the role because he owed RKO two days of work. That an actor who makes little more than a cameo received the top slot on the marquee shows just how little name recognition the two leads—John McGuire and Margaret Tallichet—carried at the time.

But don’t let the relative anonymity of the talent steer you away. As was the case with many noirs that followed, the low-level players at RKO managed to take a relatively straightforward idea and transcend its perfunctory origins, creating a work of art has endured the test of time. What separates Stranger on the Third Floor from the rest of the field is the fact that Ingster and company were doing something that had never been done before—they were making the first example of what we now call noir.

The film opens with a murder trial. Mike Ward (McGuire), a struggling reporter, has just caught his big break. He saw Joe Briggs (played by the unluckiest guy in film history, Elisha Cook Jr.) standing over a man who had just been murdered. Mike has been struggling to climb the ladder at his newspaper gig, and the front-page story he writes about the murder gets him a $12-a-week raise. He can finally move out of his room at a dilapidated boarding house and get married to his girl, Jane (Tallichet). But there’s just one problem. Briggs swears he didn’t do it. He claims he was going back to the diner where the murder took place to pay off a debt of thirty cents, and he had just stumbled upon the victim when Mike came around the corner and saw him standing over the body. But Mike’s testimony is enough for the jury to convict. Briggs is headed to death row.

The trial’s opening act, with its ethical quandaries for Mike (Did Briggs do it or not? Did he just send an innocent man to an unjust execution?) set the stage for his subsequent spiral into what would later become a noir staple: an intense fear of living in a world that is fundamentally unjust that results in an oppressive, irrational paranoia. Shortly after the jury convicts, Mike starts to be plagued by guilt and fear. What if he did the wrong thing? What if he was a just a pawn in Fate’s unjust plan? The film allows us a window in Mike’s subjective perspective via a voiceover that provides an intense look into the deepest recesses of his unraveling psyche. When Mike gets home that night, he sees a strange-looking man (Lorre) lurking around his apartment building. When Mike confronts him, the man runs and Mike gives chase, losing him once he gets outside. Given Mike’s fragile psychological state, it’s no surprise that he starts to wonder if the man he saw is a murderer. After all, every night, Mike’s neighbor Mr. Meng (Charles Halton) snores loudly enough to wake the entire floor, but Mike can’t hear him tonight. What if he’s dead? What if the stranger did it? What if the police get it wrong and decide that Mike killed him? Through a series of flashbacks, we watch at Mike constructs a case against himself, showing how his temper and his tendency to shoot his mouth off, including an “I’ll kill you!” directed at Meng in a moment of anger, would be more than enough to wrongfully convict him of the crime. Mike tries to escape his paranoid worries by going to bed. But sleep brings no comfort—only a dream sequence that has become one of the most famous sequences in noir history.

The scene, which begins about halfway through the film, gives Ingster free reign to get as stylized as he wants, and he takes full advantage of this freedom. Prior to the dream sequence, the film had already featured extreme lighting, symbolic shadows and off-kilter camera angles that were clearly influenced by German Expressionism, an artistic movement that began in Germany in the early twentieth century and worked its way into early films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922). These films, among others, featured highly stylized and symbolic imagery that created a sense of surreal disorientation, often reflecting the psychological state of the characters. However, the early films that utilized the style of German Expressionism almost always fit into the fantasy-horror genre and don't have much, if any, grounding in a real-life setting. Ingster was the first to adapt this expressionistic style to a story set in the crime-riddled American urban landscape, and his adaptive efforts are never more effective than in Mike's dream sequence. Ingster subjects Mike to a surreal murder trial where the feverish imagery and cockeyed camera angles reflect his worst nightmare—living (and dying) in a world where everything is askew.

When Mike escapes his nightmare and wakes up in the middle of the night, he decides to check on Mr. Meng to put his fears to rest. No such luck. Meng is sleeping the Big Sleep, his throat sliced open, killed the same way as the victim in opening murder trial. Will Mike’s worst fears come true? Will he go from being an unwitting perpetrator in a miscarriage of justice to an unwitting victim? Will the Stranger get away with murder?

It seems unfair that, of all those associated with a film as well made as Stranger on the Third Floor, only Peter Lorre went on to have any kind of successful career. John McGuire would never get another role like Mike Ward. While he continued to act for another dozen years, virtually all of his post-Stranger roles were uncredited bit parts—a bitterly long coda for an actor who showed such promise as a leading man in this film. Margaret Tallichet retired from acting in 1941, a mere five years after she began her career. As previously mentioned, Ingster would only get two more directing gigs, and he went nine years after Stranger before the first of those two was offered to him. The film might cast a long shadow over the hundreds of noirs that came after it, but most of the people involved in its making met career-related fates not dissimilar to the events that befall Lorre’s character at the end of the film.

But despite these unfortunate outcomes, Stranger on the Third Floor deserves its status as the first film noir and as a minor classic. Its unique blend of expressionistic visuals, Mike’s uncertain, paranoid voiceover, and a cast of characters who all fit into a decidedly gray area on the spectrum of morality makes it—with the exception of the brief coda at the end—a true noir, and the first clear-cut case of a film that fits within the belatedly recognized genre. For the first time, viewers saw how highly stylized and deeply symbolic visuals could accurately reflect the dark, ever-shifting morality of the characters that populated the unforgiving American cities of the post-war era. While they may not know his name, fans of the noir genre owe a debt of gratitude to Boris Ingster for taking the risks he took. Not many first-time directors would make such bold choices in an effort to create a film that was truly groundbreaking. Without his efforts, the noir genre might look markedly different today—and not in a good way. So if you’re a film noir fan, make sure to raise your glass to Stranger on the Third Floor. Noir wouldn’t be the same without it.

[Steve-O]

Fantastic job with this. Sorry I got to posting it on the blog late.

Man, I just love this movie. A few years ago I did get to see it on the big screen in NYC. One of Tallichet's daughters introduced the film. She got a kick out of how people still fondly remember her mother from watching Stranger.

McGuire is in a noir-ish horror film that's not too bad (if you can't sleep at 3am). It's The Invisible Ghost. It's actually more of a crime thriller than a horror film.

[MartinTeller]

[review from May 22, 2011]

Sometimes referred to as the “first true film noir”. Released in 1940, I would say it certainly is a contender. With a deep cynicism (about the indifference of the criminal justice system), rich chiaroscuro lighting and Peter Lorre as a creepy lurker and a small role for Elisha Cook, Jr., it fits the bill. But what an eccentric film. The performances are off-kilter, even borderline crazy. The pacing is very unusual, the film takes a lengthy diversion as John McGuire agonizes via voiceover, and then a long dream sequence that’s a near-masterpiece of expressionism. It’s just a weird movie, one that almost seems “bad” but is still fascinating. It really creeps under your skin, aided by some amazing visuals. Rating: 8