Through a Glass Darkly

Do you know the quotation, Emerson: 'Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass'? – a nameless partygoer, The Stranger (1946)

It's a bright, guilty world. – Michael O'Hara, The Lady From Shanghai (1947)

Agent Wilson of the Allied War Crimes Commission has a gambit to find a runaway Nazi: leave his lackey's cell door open one morning, and follow where he goes. The lackey interprets his freedom as a miracle, converts, and tracks down his master to a small town in the state of "Konn-Ech-Tee-Küt" to save his soul. 

Small-town America has made a pleasant abode for the fugitive, he teaches German history to the boys at the local prep school and is engaged to the daughter of a Supreme Court Justice. In his spare time he services the town church clock, and is often found crouched in the bell-fry like a nesting eagle.

The lackey has led the police to the Wanted Man, so naturally the lackey must be killed. His body is covered with a pile of leaves and left sitting in a nearby forest where the professor's students play Paper chase.

Thus goes the film's prologue, and the whole essence of the matter. 

This excellent film has the unfortunate reputation of an impersonal "assignment" for Welles, where his artistic sensibilities were drowned out to show Hollywood that he could direct a conventional picture like everyone else. It's an overstated criticism that only has serious application to the film's detective plot, which is uncharacteristically generic. The mise-en-scene that Welles has recourse to for this story, conversely, is inspired from beginning to end, despite being less extravagant and disjunctive than in his more renowned works. The darkly humorous evocation of a sleepy autumnal town with a "touch of evil" running through it is prodigiously executed, and with a much more mobile camera than the film's detractors make it seem. It's only a matter of trading one perfect style for another.

The two main performances – Welles as Franz Kindler/Charles Rankin and Loretta Young as his deceived wife – are extremely satisfying. I need only link this scene for proof. Edward G. Robinson as the Nazi hunter receives an indomitable portrait for the film's final shot. When filming, he would only let Welles photograph him on the "good side" of his face...whichever side that is. This was his only collaboration with Welles, but he is spiritually revived as the self-conscious gangster "Uncle" Joe Grandi in Touch of Evil (1958).

Score: 4/5 :)