LastingAware
The greatest movie ever!
Salubfoto
It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.
Derry Herrera
Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.
gridoon2018
"Love From A Stranger" is notable as one of the first film adaptations of Agatha Christie's work, and certainly the earliest that is commercially available today. The first three quarters of its length are not too thrilling (they are a little padded - the script was based on a short Christie story, after all), and Basil Rathbone's eyebrow-raising gives away his evil intentions too early (to be more specific, at the scene where he gets Ann Harding to sign the papers about their new house), but the last 20 minutes will have you glued to your seat. I would go as far as describing them as a masterclass in building screen suspense. Also fun to watch a young Joan Hickson, one of the future Miss Marples, playing someone on the opposite side of the intellectual spectrum. **1/2 out of 4.
Paularoc
A young woman, played by Ann Harding, wins a huge lottery and has big plans to see the world and do exciting things. She soon meets the romantic and suave Basil Rathbone character who quickly wins her over with his smooth talk. In spite of both her roommate and ex-beau warning her that Basil is not all he appears to be, Harding marries him. The middle part of the movie is very draggy. All right already - she's a sap and he's crazy. But the ending makes up for the earlier slow pace. The verbal battle between Harding and Rathbone is quite amazing. The movie is worth watching because of the performances of Harding and Rathbone but the whole "Bluebeard" premise is not one I find particularly interesting or entertaining.
Igenlode Wordsmith
Ann Harding (as a mysteriously-American-accented London typist) is top-billed in the opening credits -- but when explaining the nature of my cinema visit later, it was as "a film with Basil Rathbone and Binnie Hale" that I instinctively described it. Rathbone has been praised (and rightly so) in other reviews: for an actor best known as the swift-quipping villainous fencing master of the swashbuckler genre, or the alert and cerebral Sherlock Holmes, he puts on an astonishing act here as a charismatic seducer, while his theatrical training is clearly to the fore when he carries off his set-piece speeches about moonlight over the Taj Mahal... and manages to make them sound compelling instead of merely false. (Miss Harding doesn't manage quite so well when it comes to her turn with the same lines; but then her character is supposed to be merely parroting his.) Binnie Hale, meanwhile -- darling of the West End musical comedy stage throughout the 1920s -- here plays the heroine's unmarried flatmate (frankly, I was hoping by the end that the rejected suitor would find solace in the arms of plain good-hearted Kate) as more or less a 'straight' role, but manages to liven every scene she is in with her tremendous energy and sense of timing. It is not on the face of it much of a part, but Miss Hale makes a good deal out of it and brings the character sympathetically to life.Bruce Seton puts in a rather wooden performance as the admittedly somewhat one-dimensional Ronnie (one of Agatha Christie's standard hearty-but-dim stalwart Englishmen), which does the film no favours; and I felt that an otherwise excellent script, which makes matters apparent without ever explicitly stating them, would have benefited from a little more ambiguity. Rathbone's performance is so good that it seems a pity to make him an obvious villain from so early on, while it makes the heroine seem a fool for failing to see it -- a missed opportunity perhaps for leaving the audience wondering about Gerald's sincerity until a much later point.Miss Harding is not quite up to the standard of her supporting players when it comes to dealing with this sort of material (compare her cutaway 'reaction shots' to those of Rathbone and Miss Hale -- but then to Seton!) and her character comes across at times as somewhat one-note in moments of stress; when Gerald rages at her for entering the cellar, for example, the actress goes immediately into 'maximum shock' mode and stays there. But on the whole she holds her own in a demanding part which requires her to appear in almost every scene, and creates real chemistry with just about every character the heroine interacts with, from the half-wit rustic Emmy to the hypochondriac Aunt Lou, and of course the two men with whom she is seen to be in love. (And keep a look out for those classic 1930s costumes -- especially the demure but at times extremely revealing evening dress of the final scene!)
ctyankee1
This is a movie based on a Agatha Christie story.Basil Rathbone plays Gerald he is a great actor. Ann Harding who plays Carol wins the lottery. It show how easily she is fooled by sweet talk from a man, a stranger no less. She is a very generous and kind hearted soul. You want to kind of slap her and wake her up, she believes the best in someone she hardly knows. She breaks off her engagement with Ronnie and goes off on a trip where Gerald shows up on the same ship and befriends her. Gerald & Carol marry soon after. Gerald buys a house with her money where there are no neighbors, phones or regular contacts. He starts acting strange and shows his anger towards her that scares her & starts to make her question his sanity. He makes her read a story out loud of a criminal named Fletcher that killed 3 women from a book about criminals. He then tells her how he knows what women want and how he uses them. She gets a wake call. Gerald has an ending in store for his new bride Carol, and boy does she have one for him. It is kind of funny watching the two inter-re-act while she goes into detail and drama about how she killed someone. He is really into her story. Now go watch it!!
