A 1946 film noir featuring Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre & Geraldine Fitzgerald. All three meet up in the beginning of the film to go in on a future horse race hoping to win the big payday. Why these three we never find out but each is in their own desperate straits that a windfall w/this much potential can be life altering. Lorre, hanging around the lower echelons of the British criminal underworld, has a youngish girlfriend & is always one step ahead of the rent collector but when an associate is implicated in a murder & his girl is a witness, the noose of implication rests squarely around his neck. Greenstreet is an investment banker who has co-opted a widowed dowager's funds into a high risk/high cash scheme which soon comes crumbling around his ears where marriage to the woman may be a possibility. Fitzgerald is caught in a one sided marriage to Alan Napier (Alfred from TV's Batman) who already has eyes for another but she holds out demented hope she can sway his love back to her. All of these mini & melodramas culminate on the day of the race where Greenstreet is so keen to take care of his money problems, he's already offered the sale of his stake in the ticket to someone who will make him flush but Fitzgerald is adamant they collect the prize as a unit which makes him commit a fatal decision. More O. Henry than out & out noir, this collision of morals really gets going in the last third but one wonders what if their horse lost? Co-written by John Huston, whose directing debut The Maltese Falcon carries some of the same plot elements (& some of the cast as well), is still vital for the nightmarish yarn it weaves.
Review of Three Strangers
