Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
An investigator from the War Crimes Commission travels to Connecticut to find an infamous Nazi, who may be hiding out in a small town in the guise of a distinguished professor engaged to the Supreme Court Justice’s daughter.
Orson Welles's postwar thriller is notable chiefly for its striking visual style — Russell Metty's deep-focus black-and-white cinematography and the memorable clock tower climax give it genuine noir atmosphere. The plot is a serviceable but somewhat mechanical cat-and-mouse thriller; Welles himself considered it his least personal film, and the narrative mechanics are more functional than inspired. Edward G. Robinson is reliably solid, though Welles the actor (playing the hidden Nazi) is more compelling than Loretta Young's underwritten role. The premise of a Nazi hiding in plain sight in idyllic small-town America had novelty for its era but follows fairly conventional genre beats. The clock tower ending is visually spectacular and memorable, if somewhat operatically convenient.