House of Strangers
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Written by Philip Yordan from a novel by Jerome Weldman
1949/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Max Monetti: Always looking for a new way to get hurt from a new man. Get smart, there hasn’t been a new man since Adam.[/box]
This unsung but hard-hitting drama features one of Edward G. Robinson’s very finest performances, and that’s really saying something.
Italian immigrant Gino Manetti (Robinson) started in America as a barber and rose to be a wealthy banker by lending to immigrants on the Upper East Side of New York without collateral but at usurious rates. He is the undisputed patriarch to his wife and four sons. Three of his sons work at the bank and he treats them like servants, insulting them freely in the process. Eldest son Joe (Luther Adler) works as a teller and tries to caution his father about the need to keep books, but Gino only tells him to “go back to his cage”. Gino’s fourth son Max (Richard Conte) is a criminal lawyer and Gino treats him with some respect.
Max is engaged to marry the beautiful and very traditionally Italian Maria (Debra Paget). When the fiery Irene Bennett (Susan Hayward) hires him to do some legal work, the attorney-client relationship quickly turns into a stormy love affair. Max is distracted from his romantic woes when the bank examiners find numerous criminal problems lurking in what passes for the books. Rankling from years of abuse, the other brothers refuse to lift a finger for their father and Max ends up taking the rap as a result of his overzealous defense of Gino in court. At the urging of Gino, Max spends his seven-year prison sentence plotting revenge. With Efram Zimbalist, Jr. as Tony Manetti.
House of Strangers is marred a bit by the extraneous Conte-Hayward love affair which distracts from the compelling family drama at the core of the film. Otherwise it is practically perfect. Robinson grew up with Italians and spoke the language fluently. He is the quintessence of stubborn manhood as he terrorizes the dinner table with his loud opera records and orders. He makes his character so downright human though that it is hard to hate him quite as much as the film means us to do. Conte makes a dynamic and cynical foil and Adler, better known as a stage actor, really shines. According to the commentary, Mankiewicz contributed a lot to the screenplay and the crackling dialogue seems to bear that out. Recommended.
Also according to the commentary, House of Strangers received very limited distribution due to complaints by both Amadeo Giannini, founder of the Bank of America, and Spyros Skouras, president of Twentieth Century Fox, who thought it was aimed at them.
Edward G. Robinson won the award for Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance in House of Strangers.
Trailer – Milton R. Krasner, cinematographer
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