The Stranger (1946) Dinner Scene

This clip begins as Mr Wilson (Edward G. Robinson) sets his sights on Professor Charles Rankin (Orson Welles). At the subsequent dinner party, Wilson attempts to get a feel for Rankin, and for whether he might be Franz Kindler (a fact already revealed to the audience). When Rankin argues that the Germans are so terrible that they should be exterminated, Wilson concludes that Rankin is “above suspicion“. But something else that Rankin says later causes Wilson to reverse himself. Note that, when Rankin advocates genocide, no one expresses horror. Wilson doesn’t later tell his agency that Rankin is a crazed Germanophobe, but that he is “above suspicion“. This scene is an artefact from an ill-remember era when preaching genocide was socially acceptable in America. The argument given for Wilson’s later reversal of opinion is itself worth commentary. Rankin denies that Karl Marx was a German because he was a Jew. Wilson rhetorically asks who but a Nazi could offe