Edward G. Robinson is a member of a war crimes committee trying to track down the infamous Nazi Franz Kindler (Orson Welles). He decides that it would be worth the trouble to release captured concentration camp officer Konrad Meinike in the hope that he will lead the committee to wherever Kindler is hiding. Trailing Meinike to Smalltown USA, Robinson discovers that Meinike has mysteriously disappeared. As he was the only person that knew the identity of Kindler, Robinson is left to his own investigations to discover Kindler's new identity in the town and expose him.

Directed in 1947 by Orson Welles, the subject matter was clearly a bit of well timed propaganda by Hollywood, while cashing in on Welles' growing popularity. Sure, it's not too hard to see that this film blindly presented the small American town as a microcosm of America, and the war criminals (or any bad guy for that matter, but the Germans were a good target at the time) as a corrupting influence against Truth, Justice and The American Way that had to be totally eliminated at all costs. But thankfully the suspense and (most) acting worked effectively in getting the guts of the story across in an entertaining and compelling fashion.

As a dvd, it's nothing exceptional, but it does a reasonable job of presenting the audio and video in a fashion that you can still enjoy if you're a fan of Orson Welles or Edward G. Robinson.

This film comes to us in a black and white 1.33:1 transfer, which is pretty close to the original 1.37:1 film aspect ratio. The style of the film lends itself to lots of dark scenes with silhouettes and lots of contrast. Many of the darker scenes have little shadow detail, though undoubtedly some scenes were intended to be shot this way by Welles, considering the subject matter and the mood he would have been aiming for.

Tonally, rather than having a broad range from black to white, the picture often seems to be a wash of middle greys (when it's not using stark black shadows). Clarity is fine, although often just average with moments were it appears overly soft. Not unexpectedly, there are the usual film artifacts peppering the picture from time to time, mostly specks and the occasional scratch, but nothing which concerned me.

The Stranger is supposed to be a stereo mix, but it's most likely a two channel mono mix. In this case, a DD1.0 mono mix utilizing just the center channel would have been just fine with me. Clarity was quite good, with less hiss and pop than expected, and clear and easy to understand dialogue. It handles the louder moments (such as when the score kicks into high gear) well, with no real problems with distortion. The extra features section lists Cast Bio's, but contains a brief bio for Orson Welles only.