With its low-key black and white cinematography, hard-boiled characters of profound weakness and an almost cheerfully subversive story, Jean Negulesco's Three Strangers is undiluted nostalgia of an urbane and cunning variety. Never so far away from rationality that it is an altogether unique yet unmistakably theatrical parable, it makes a shadowy and alluring potboiler, reaching some moments of pure magnetism in a handful of its crucial sequences.The script by John Huston and his friend Howard Koch is masterful in structure. The film begins in the shadows and fog of the London streets as Geraldine Fitzgerald coaxes two strangers, Sydney Greenstreet's caricatured attorney Jerome K. Arbutney and Peter Lorre's charismatic and cultivated alcoholic Johnny West to her London pad on Chinese New Year at the hand of her doctrine that if three strangers make the same wish to an idol of the Chinese goddess of fortune and destiny, the wish will be fulfilled. Because money will make their dreams come true, the three gamble on a sweepstakes ticket for the Grand National horse race together and concur that they will not sell the ticket if it is selected, and will hold onto it until the race is run. Fitzgerald would use the money to attempt to win her alienated husband back, Arbutny to lay the groundwork for his appointment to the esteemed Barrister's Club, and Johnny to purchase a bar as his home.After this single, taut, spare and graceful expository dialogue scene, the plot strands of the three strangers are unraveled, demystifying who we began to believe they were in the initial scene. Greenstreet insatiably and uproariously overplays as Arbutney, who we learn has looted a trust fund. Lorre is seamlessly graceful as the drunk who becomes enmeshed in a murder of which he's not guilty, while Fitzgerald is astonishing as a manipulative and truly unpredictable woman, a femme fatale of the highest caliber.Undeservedly obscure and overlooked, Three Strangers is about the human desire to look to gods and idols to resolve our problems, only to be driven into worse new ones. Mostly owing to the performances and the cynical manipulation of the noir plot, the film resolves as kind of a black comedy. It is an admirable and deftly executed variation on the hopeless and acerbic atmosphere of the film noir. In noir, characters are corrupt fall guys of the universe, brimming with existential distress, just like us all. Why not find a chuckle or two in it?

This is a "turn off your brain and enjoy" film. In other words, if you think through how silly the plot is, you'll most likely grow tired of the film and fail to see it to the end. However, if you can suppress that urge, then you might just find the whole thing quite enjoyable.The film begins with Geraldine Fitzgerald finding two strangers (Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre) and convincing them to come to her apartment (it's not THAT kind of film--relax). There, she tells them a strange tale that some Chinese goddess can grant wishes if three strangers all simultaneously wish for the exact same thing at the stroke of midnight (yeah, right). They all decide to wish for a winning sweepstakes ticket. In the meantime, they'll write up an agreement to share the proceeds equally. Then, after that's concluded, they all say a silent prayer to the goddess at midnight.Upon leaving, the film then shows the lives of all three characters--all of which turn out to be very screwed up indeed. Fitzgerald turns out to be a vindictive Borderline Personality who delights in making her estranged husband miserable. You assume that sooner or later he would kill her because her actions are so pointless and mean. Peter Lorre is hiding out with another man, as they are implicated for murder. However, Lorre DIDN'T commit the crime--he's just an alcoholic who was with the wrong people at the wrong time. Finally, Greenstreet is a supposedly reputable solicitor (sort of like a lawyer who does not do criminal law, for those other Americans out there). However, he's really begun playing in the stock markets with his client's trust fund and throughout the film this problem gets worse and worse.Actually, all three of the stories are quite compelling and I really wish the film had found some other way to string them all together other than the silly goddess plot device. I also liked how all three characters came back together at the end of the tale. But the whole wishing on a Buddhist statue at midnight angle just made my head hurt. With a bit of a re-write this could have been an exceptional film. As it is, it's goofy and strange but quite intriguing if you can slog through the silly stuff.

The time is 1938 London before the World War. A woman of mystery, Geraldine Fitzgerald, invites two perfect strangers played by Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet up to her apartment. She's a believer in the ancient Chinese god of Kwan Lin and it's said that if Three Strangers wish on that deity and their's is the same wish it will be granted. In this case the wish is money and it's in the form of a sweepstakes ticket that Peter Lorre has purchased and who gives two thirds away to Fitzgerald and Greenstreet in the hope of fortune coming their way.After this we see a glimpse of the lives of the three people. Lorre is a petty criminal who's gotten himself into a beautiful jackpot being accused of a murder that he didn't commit. Fitzgerald is a shrewish wife who stays married to an unhappy Alan Napier who just wants to be free to marry Marjorie Riordan. This is a harbinger of a role that Fitzgerald really perfected a dozen years later in Ten North Frederick. As for Greenstreet, he's a solicitor, an attorney of no great significance in the legal profession, an English version of a man whose name I was once threatened with named Abe Hecht. It's now become a synonym for cheap shysters with me. Anyway Greenstreet's the trustee of an estate he's been dipping into. He wants to make a financial killing real bad because he thinks that money will buy him respectability which he craves like nothing else.The film is like a 90 minute version of a Twilight Zone episode, but that's not a putdown because some really classic stuff was done on that program. The script was written by Howard Koch and John Huston and directed by Jean Negulesco. I'm surprised Huston did not want to direct this one himself, but Jean Negulesco got some of the best performances that members of the cast ever gave on screen, especially from the three leads.Notice no really big movie names are in this cast, no leading men screen legends. That may have been an asset to the film because it concentrates on the story and the characters created. The ironic fates of all three of the sweepstakes ticket sharers could have come right out of the imaginative mind of Rod Serling. And Peter Lorre is actually allowed a little romance in a movie. That alone makes Three Strangers absolutely priceless.Three Strangers is a B picture gem, one of those low budget sleepers that Hollywood puts out to great critical acclaim that turn a profit because of the low budget. And this review is dedicated to that attorney Abe Hecht whom I never met and to his idiot brother-in-law Morris Stetch who threatened me with him back in 1979. To see if Greenstreet obtains the status of a Clarence Darrow and rises from Abe Hechtdom, don't miss Three Strangers.

The story may get confusing, even muddled, but the visuals continue to shine. This is the golden age of black and white photography from the studios. There's a dreamy quality to the low key lighting that keeps the eye riveted even when the story line falters. Ace director Jean Negulesco certainly knows how to put a sheen on even difficult material.Scripters Huston and Koch appear to be following on 1941's Maltese Falcon with Lorre and Greenstreet and a statuette with perhaps mystical powers. The format is unusual for its time. The screenplay interweaves three story lines using the statuette and a sweepstakes ticket as an axis. None of the three story lines, however, really gels. Perhaps it's the editing or the script that gives the shifting back and forth a disjointed quality that's sometimes hard to follow. But none of the three strands follow-up well on that intriguing initial scene in Fitzgerald's apartment. (Note her clinging gown in that scene. I'm surprised it got past the censors.)Anyway, it's always a treat to watch such stylish presences as the imperious Greenstreet and the sly-fox Lorre play-off one another. There's been no one like them before or since. And, for once, Lorre gets a sympathetic role and even the girl (Loring). Then too, it's probably not surprising that the dipso character Lorre plays comes-off best since writer Huston was himself a notorious boozer. The scene that lingers for me is where Greenstreet uses his oily charm on the pixilated Lady Beladon (Rosalind Ivan) who turns out to be shrewder than he thought. I gather that the movie's last scene-- in addition to its irony-- intends to say something profound about the role of fate in our lives. I take the point to be that some unseen hand may control the fortune of lottery tickets, but the hand for all its mystical force cannot determine what we do with them. For the fate-obsessed 1940's this was an unusual gesture to the power of free-will. But, metaphysics aside, it's the power of the camera that continues to hold this stylish pastiche together.