Review of Three Strangers (1946) by Jon C — 08 Aug 2016

Interesting Lorre/Greenstreet/Huston film.

Long out of circulation, this 1946 vehicle by veteran Hollywood director Jean Negulesco (who had directed Lorre and Greenstreet previously in The Mask of Demetrios and would go on to make Daddy Long Legs, Three Coins in the Fountain, and How to Marry a Millionaire) was finally released on Region 1 DVD in 2012. The film has an interesting history. The original was intended to be a sequel to John Huston's The Maltese Falcon, using a screenplay Huston had written but hadn't gotten produced, with Greenstreet and Lorre reprising their roles as Casper Gutman and Joel Cairo in a new adventure, this time centered around a mysterious Chinese idol rather than a bird statuette. But it turned out that Warner's didn't have and couldn't get permission to re-use the same character names, so the project was turned into a film with no reference to The Maltese Falcon, still using Huston's screenplay.

The result, the story of three strangers in 1938 London who pray to the idol for luck, and how the answer to their prayer affects their interweaving relationships, is something of a neglected classic, with Greenstreet and Lorre doing some of their best acting, and Huston's unusual and fascinating screenplay foreshadowing the theme of how greed affects human relationships which was to feature in many of Huston's own subsequent films like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Beat the Devil, and The Asphalt Jungle.

Recommended with four stars as an entertaining and interesting piece of cinema which deserves to be better known; if you are a real fan of Lorre or Greenstreet or a serious student of Huston's work, consider it a five star must see. The Warner Archive DVD print quality is very good.