Box office The Stranger was the only film made by Welles to have been a
bona fide box office success upon its release. Its cost was $1.034 million; and 15 months after its release it had grossed $3.216 million.
The Stranger holds a 97% rating at
Rotten Tomatoes based on 29 critic reviews, including two contemporaneous reviews. The sole negative review is that of
The New York Times critic
Bosley Crowther, published in July 1946. Crowther called the film a "bloodless, manufactured show" in which Welles "gave no illusion of the sort of depraved and heartless creatures that the Nazi mass-murderers were. He is just Mr. Welles, a young actor, doing a boyishly bad acting job in a role which is highly incredible—another weak feature of the film. As a matter of fact, the writing of
The Stranger, by
Anthony Veiller, is the weakest thing about it—and that estimation includes another silly performance by Loretta Young as the killer's wife. For the premise is not only farfetched, but the whole construction of the tale relieves very soon all the mystery and suspense that such a story should have." More favorable coverage was found in
Variety, which called the film "a socko melodrama, spinning an intriguing web of thrills and chills. Director Orson Welles gives the production a fast, suspenseful development, drawing every advantage from the hard-hitting script from the
Victor Trivas story. … A uniformly excellent cast gives reality to events that transpire. The three stars, Robinson, Young and Welles, turn in some of their best work, the actress being particularly effective as the misled bride."
Life magazine featured
The Stranger as Movie of the Week in its issue dated June 3, 1946. The film was screened in competition at the
1947 Venice Film Festival. Critic
James Agee wrote in
The Nation in 1946: "Orson Welles's new movie,
The Stranger, is a tidy, engaging thriller about a Nazi arch-criminal... There is nothing about the picture that even appears to be "important" or "new", but there is nothing pretentious or arty either, and although I have occasionally seen atmospheres used in films in far grander poetic context, I don't think I have seen them more pleasantly or expertly appreciated. In a quite modest way the picture is, merely, much more graceful, intelligent, and enjoyable that most other movies... "
Leslie Halliwell wrote: "Highly unconvincing and artificial melodrama enhanced by directorial touches, splendid photography and no-holds-barred climax involving a church clock." On its release,
The Stranger was unfavorably compared to
Alfred Hitchcock's
Shadow of a Doubt (1943). "One reason for the similarities is the recutting, supervised by Ernest Nims," wrote film historian Bret Wood. "By removing the Latin American sequence and many of the political elements (such as the clock/fascist analogy),
The Stranger is transformed from a socially relevant drama to a small town murder story, with the villain more a psychopath than a political fugitive. Nims cut the film to play like a conventional thriller with little regard to Welles's subtextual purposes."
Home media After the film fell into the
public domain, a number of poor-quality versions of
The Stranger were released by various sources. Some versions were duplicated from second- or third-generation releases, and were severely and badly edited, until
MGM Home Entertainment (the owners of most of the International Pictures catalog) restored the film and released it on
DVD in 2004. An archival restoration was released on DVD and
Blu-ray Disc by
Kino Classics in October 2013. Kino's release was mastered from a 35mm print at the
Library of Congress. The release includes audio commentary by
Bret Wood. The DVD includes excerpts of
Death Mills (1945), a
U.S. War Department documentary on the Nazi death camps directed by
Billy Wilder. Other extras include four of Welles's
World War II radio broadcasts: "Alameda" (
Nazi Eyes on Canada, 1942), "War Workers" (
Ceiling Unlimited, 1942), "Brazil" (
Hello Americans, 1942), and "Bikini Atomic Test" (
Orson Welles Commentaries, 1946). The disc is not captioned for the hearing impaired. Olive Films also put out a Blu-Ray of the film sanctioned from
MGM in 2017. The film is also available on the
Netflix and
Amazon Prime streaming services, and the
Dailymotion and
YouTube video-sharing platforms. ==Adaptations==