EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Alistair Olson After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

gridoon2018 "Love From A Stranger" is notable as one of the first film adaptations of Agatha Christie's work, and certainly the earliest that is commercially available today. The first three quarters of its length are not too thrilling (they are a little padded - the script was based on a short Christie story, after all), and Basil Rathbone's eyebrow-raising gives away his evil intentions too early (to be more specific, at the scene where he gets Ann Harding to sign the papers about their new house), but the last 20 minutes will have you glued to your seat. I would go as far as describing them as a masterclass in building screen suspense. Also fun to watch a young Joan Hickson, one of the future Miss Marples, playing someone on the opposite side of the intellectual spectrum. **1/2 out of 4.

lordreith An extraordinarily entertaining thriller. The acting is melodramatic, and rightly so. A clever plot by Agatha Christie (how could it be otherwise?) keeps things moving along at a rapid clip. Two wonderful players -- Basil Rathbone and Ann Harding -- give bravura over-the-top performances that are breathtaking in their high-wire daring. Ann Harding especially was a revelation -- a gorgeous blonde with poise and class who had beautiful diction -- an American mid-Atlantic "Seven Sisters" voice that was as melodious as a cello. Basil Rathbone never ceases to amaze. Here, he is frightening and charming simultaneously. And two cheers for the Art Deco furnishings that grace one scene. Were those Lalique glass-paneled doors?

Igenlode Wordsmith Ann Harding (as a mysteriously-American-accented London typist) is top-billed in the opening credits -- but when explaining the nature of my cinema visit later, it was as "a film with Basil Rathbone and Binnie Hale" that I instinctively described it. Rathbone has been praised (and rightly so) in other reviews: for an actor best known as the swift-quipping villainous fencing master of the swashbuckler genre, or the alert and cerebral Sherlock Holmes, he puts on an astonishing act here as a charismatic seducer, while his theatrical training is clearly to the fore when he carries off his set-piece speeches about moonlight over the Taj Mahal... and manages to make them sound compelling instead of merely false. (Miss Harding doesn't manage quite so well when it comes to her turn with the same lines; but then her character is supposed to be merely parroting his.) Binnie Hale, meanwhile -- darling of the West End musical comedy stage throughout the 1920s -- here plays the heroine's unmarried flatmate (frankly, I was hoping by the end that the rejected suitor would find solace in the arms of plain good-hearted Kate) as more or less a 'straight' role, but manages to liven every scene she is in with her tremendous energy and sense of timing. It is not on the face of it much of a part, but Miss Hale makes a good deal out of it and brings the character sympathetically to life.Bruce Seton puts in a rather wooden performance as the admittedly somewhat one-dimensional Ronnie (one of Agatha Christie's standard hearty-but-dim stalwart Englishmen), which does the film no favours; and I felt that an otherwise excellent script, which makes matters apparent without ever explicitly stating them, would have benefited from a little more ambiguity. Rathbone's performance is so good that it seems a pity to make him an obvious villain from so early on, while it makes the heroine seem a fool for failing to see it -- a missed opportunity perhaps for leaving the audience wondering about Gerald's sincerity until a much later point.Miss Harding is not quite up to the standard of her supporting players when it comes to dealing with this sort of material (compare her cutaway 'reaction shots' to those of Rathbone and Miss Hale -- but then to Seton!) and her character comes across at times as somewhat one-note in moments of stress; when Gerald rages at her for entering the cellar, for example, the actress goes immediately into 'maximum shock' mode and stays there. But on the whole she holds her own in a demanding part which requires her to appear in almost every scene, and creates real chemistry with just about every character the heroine interacts with, from the half-wit rustic Emmy to the hypochondriac Aunt Lou, and of course the two men with whom she is seen to be in love. (And keep a look out for those classic 1930s costumes -- especially the demure but at times extremely revealing evening dress of the final scene!)

Michael_Elliott Love from a Stranger (1937) *** (out of 4) A poor woman (Ann Harding) wins the lottery and soon she's swept off her feet by a nice man (Basil Rathbone) but after they're married she begins to think he has a few secrets including murder. Director Rowland V. Lee does a good job on this story by Agatha Christie and builds some nice atmosphere, which helps matters. Harding is very good in her role but the real key here is Rathbone who, as later in Son of Frankenstein, goes through a nervous breakdown, which is wonderful to watch. Some might call it over the top but I think he does a good job at showing the character losing his mind. Some slow segments hamper the film but the ending certainly makes up for that.