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Counted among Warner Brothers’ film noir catalog, Three Strangers shares a thematic aspect with The Night Has a Thousand Eyes in that it is a noir with a strong atmosphere of the supernatural about it.
Warner Brothers Studios
A mysterious woman wordlessly lures a man to her apartment in London. Once inside another man, obviously intoxicated, rises from the sofa. The woman explains that she also invited this gentleman, again without knowing anything about him, even his name. She speedily explains that at least for the moment, they must not reveal their names or anything about themselves to each other. In her apartment she has a statue of the Chinese goddess Kwan Yin and at midnight as the new year begins, it is said that the goddess will open her eyes and grant a wish to three strangers, provided that they wish for the same thing. They agree to wish for money via a lottery ticket for the national horse race. They sign the ticket, making it a contract amongst themselves, using a blotter to obscure their names as they sign so no one sees another’s name.
They wait for midnight, gazing at the candle-lit statuette. The hour is struck, and a wind extinguishes the flame, plunging the room into darkness. By the time the candle is relit, the hour has passed. Then Crystal Shackleford (Geraldine Fitzgerald), who can now safely reveal her name, insists that she saw the statuette’s eyes open, as the myth insisted. The first man, Jerome Arbutny (Sydney Greenstreet) insists he saw no such thing, with the third person, Johnny West (Peter Lorre) taking no serious part in the debate if the eye opened or not. The three go their separate ways, Arbutny cynical that anything serious has transpired, West willing to believe but more interested in more drink to fuel his alcoholism, and Shackleford devout in her faith that this idol will bring about fortune for them all.
The rest of the film follows the three through their troubled lives. Arbutny has embezzled funds from a trust he manages for an eccentric widowed peer, the discovery of which will ruin him financially and reputationally. West, in a drunken stupor, was shanghaied into being a lookout for a burglary that went badly and ended with the murder of a police officer. Shackleford instigated the entire affair in hope of winning back her husband who, after unspecified marital difficulties, has taken an extended business trip to Canada. Each person’s life spirals more and more out of control. Arbutny finds no source of funds to cover his theft and his client is now suspicious. West ends up taking the fall for the murder one of his compatriots committed, and Shackleford’s husband returns, demanding a divorce so he may marry his new love. When the lottery ticket turns out to have drawn not only the name of a horse in the race but one favored to win, the film turns to its final act without ever addressing if it had been mere chance or supernatural forces at work as the characters suffer the consequences of their choices.
Three Strangers is an fascionating sort of film noir. Produced in 1946, it is early in that genre’s formation, so the dipping into the supernatural is not an attempt to revitalize a form but one that rose organically when John Huston conceived the story. It is a film I have heard of for quite some time and this week finally got around to watching. In terms of film noir, there are better movies that I will revisit much more often than this one, but it is also interesting enough to warrant watching and with a collection of characters that are entertaining with all their faults; Icy the woman who loves West despite his drinking, Gabby their accomplice in the robbery who is a brute but one with a code and the clerks working in Arbunty’s office all give the film charm and depth. . I really like how the supernatural—not only Kwan Yin but the spirits of the dead visiting their loved ones—is handled so deftly that it can be mere coincidence or actual evidence that there is much more to the world than what we can see, hear, and touch. Three Strangers is a gritty crime noir that suggests perhaps the world is not as material as it appears.
