Three Strangers is a much underrated film noir from 1946, co-written by John Huston. Geraldine Fitzgerald, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre play three people who don’t know each other and are brought together by an odd gamble. There’s a legend that, if three strangers make the same prayer to a Chinese god, he will grant a their wish. Each of the three needs money, so they partner in the purchase of a sweepstakes ticket and give it a go.
Lorre’s character is a destitute alcoholic who would buy a bar with his windfall and never leave it. The other two need to hit the jackpot, too, but their reasons are much, much darker. The ending of the story is absurdly noir for some and tragically noir for others.
The best element of Three Strangers is Geraldine Fitzgerald’s a performance as a woman who seems eccentric, until she reveals herself as dangerously unhinged. John Huston had wanted Fitzgerald for the Bridgit O’Shaughnessy role in The Maltese Falcon, and I’m glad that Mary Astor got the part instead because Astor’s performance was perfect – and maybe the best ever liar in the history of cinema. But, when you see her in Three Strangers, it becomes clear that Fitzgerald would have been a remarkably interesting Bridgit, too.
Lorre and Greenstreet were first paired five years earlier in The Maltese Falcon (Greenstreet’s very first movie, at age 62), and Three Strangers was one of eight more films that took advantage of their chemistry.
The director was Jean Negulesco, who knew his way around the noir genre (The Mask of Dimitrios, Nobody Lives Forever, Johnny Belinda and Road House). Three Strangers is plenty entertaining, and Fitzgerald is a revelation. Three Strangers occasionally plays on Turner Classic Movies and can be streamed from Amazon and AppleTV.
