HomeyTao
For having a relatively low budget, the film's style and overall art direction are immensely impressive.
Aneesa Wardle
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
lasttimeisaw
In 1949, the soon-to-be Hollywood dignitary Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who would win 4 Oscars within two consecutive years (2 for directing and 2 for writing), knocks out two features, while A LETTER TO THREE WIVES takes all the spotlight in January (and the paycheck is Mr. Mankiewicz's first two Oscars, a full-year after), HOUSE OF STRANGERS, released five months later after its debut in Cannes, is ill-fatedly pigeonholed and regarded as a trou normand before the advent of his unqualified pièce de résistance ALL ABOUT EVE (1950), garnering another 2 naked golden statuettes for the champ. Based on Phillip Yordan's novel I'LL NEVER GO THERE ANY MORE, the film is a studio-bound feud within the Monetti family, the patriarch Gino (Robinson) is an Italian banker in the East Side of New York, who starts his enterprise from scratch, begets four sons and his druthers is the second-born Max (Conte), who is a lawyer by vocation, whereas the other three work for the family bank. The film starts on the day Max is released from prison after a 7-year stint, bays for blood after an altercation with his brothers and rebuffs the proposition to start anew in San Francisco with his old flame Irene Bennett (Hayward), at that point Gino has already been pushing up daisies. Then the flashback prompts to dwell on the familial tension from its initial stage, how Gino's preferential disposition detrimentally splinters his family into the titular "house of strangers" and causes deep rift when the family bank clashes with government investigation, and the story cogently flags up the capitalistic avarice, posits Gino as an usurious tyrant squeezing pecuniary gain out of the have-nots. Max is the only son who is spoiling for extricating Gino from the legal mire, but he is hoisted by his own petard when he tries to bribe a juror while his eldest brother Joe (Adler) has already secretly shopped him, that costs him a good 7-year and now he is back for vendetta, implanted by a vengeful Gino before his demise, can the ominous fratricide be averted in the eleventh hour? Edward G. Robinson meritoriously won the BEST ACTOR trophy in Cannes and here his pompous mien writs large through the most compelling register, his Gino is an unrepentant egoist, a terrible father, paternalistic and uncouth, sticks to the value of family and tradition but has no clue that poison has already been interjecting into his progeny through their upbringing: the wicked, the spoiled, the dumb and the craven, here is the Monetti Quartet. Max, played by a shifty-looking Richard Conte, is at first, nothing less repugnant than his magisterial father (both have the dastardly proclivity for laying their hands on women when confronted, can Mr. Robinson vanquishes a towering Hope Emerson in real life? The odds are not good on him!), but he is bestowed with a redeeming factor that he is the most upstanding one among the offspring to deserve a brighter future, but bemusing still, Max's final change-of-mind is cavalierly oversimplified. Susan Hayward, whose star was rising at then, channels a femme-fatale mystique on top of Irene's lonesome dame cliché, and Luther Adler, nearly upstages the rest with his fiendishly self-seeking turn as the nefarious Joe.Honestly, HOUSE OF STRANGERS is a gripping tale at large under Mr. Mankiewicz's proficient supervision, on the technical level, it is as good as any top-drawer monochromatic studio fare of that time, only the shady nuts-and-bolts of the doctrinaire story take the shine off the outstanding teamwork.
jarrodmcdonald-1
Edward G. Robinson won the Best Actor award at Cannes for his role in this motion picture from 20th Century Fox. He is cast as the patriarch of a dysfunctional Italian-American family and steals one scene after another. Also in the cast: Richard Conte and Efrem Zimbalist, who play his sons. As the story unfolds, we learn that the boys have been used time and again to carry out nefarious crimes that suit dear old dad's own purposes. It's a complex and multi-layered melodrama, where violence seems to be the only way out. But Conte's character finds an alternative solution, when he strikes up a relationship with a woman played by Susan Hayward. Miss Hayward gives a fascinating performance as the love interest whose own happiness is soon jeopardized by her involvement with this man from a ruthless clan.Hayward and Conte would re-team on screen a few years later in the biopic I'll Cry Tomorrow.
secondtake
House of Strangers (1949)At first this film feels like a forced fit, a good and big idea that was going to stumble over itself. Because there was a brilliant Edward G. Robinson (a Jewish American) playing a terrific old school Italian banker, and there were his four sons, each with something of a developed plot line. It begins in the present, goes back to the start of the various problems between them, then returns to the present. It's complicated in a way, and yet it ends up cohering well. The story holds water, the actors are superb (more on that), and the overall direction and construction (photography and editing) are spot on.So we end up with a very impressive movie, and one that uses worn ideas and makes them fresh enough to last. Robinson is not in the end the main character, but one of the sons is, Max, played by Richard Conte. Now Conte is not to everyone's taste. There's something conceited about him even when he's playing a regular guy. But he's just right for this part of the "good brother" who is also a lawyer and who gets drawn into major mischief by his father's bullheadedness. And Conte is the key to an important other thread to the story (and in some ways the best part), his falling in love with a young and independent Irene Bennett played by Susan Hayward. She isn't just a love interest but she represents an alternative to his family bound, very Italian-American world.Of the other brothers, the eldest played by Luther Adler is the most caustic and believable, giving a stunning performance in just a few scenes throughout the movie. The other brothers are simpler types, and they work, too. In fact, it's only when you drift to the farther reaches of the cast, like the fiancée and her mother, do you find caricatures that strain. In all the dynamic of a group of men adjusting (or not) to the ways of the new worlds is fascinating. Throw in a physically imposing and sharp tongued leading man in Robinson and you can see how much this has going for it.The director is Joseph L. Mankiewicz has a handful of very sensitively made films among the mere twenty in his career (including "All about Eve"), and this is one of his best. He keeps the plot coherent and yet lets it breath. The characters have enough individuality to distinguish themselves without getting us distracted with peripheral stuff. And the camera-work by Milton Krasner is flawless and subtle. This again comes at the slick and yet artful high point in American black and white cinematography, the 1940s.
edwagreen
This is an outstanding film with Edward G. Robinson giving a superb performance as an old-lined Italian banker, playing the game for his economic gain at the hardship of others. It takes a depression and subsequent government intervention in banking to bring Gino Minotti (Robinson)Gino had 4 sons played with relish in particular by Richard Conte, as the attorney who attempted to bribe a juror, and Luther Adler, the son who was scorned by his father throughout life and brought unbelievable revenge.Susan Hayward shows that absolute gritty facade as the woman who loved Conte and brought him back to life after prison. Hayward shows that famous swagger walking up to a bar. I thought that in some of the scenes Hayward and Conte were practicing for "I'll Cry Tomorrow," 6 years later.Anyone notice that the ending music was the same theme played 3 years before in "The Razor's Edge?"The picture succeeds because it depicts the differences in immigrant life before and after reaching America. Greed, ambition and hate were never better depicted.
