Alida Valli

(On Cable TV, December 2022) One of the nice things about watching lesser-known film noirs as part of Turner Classic Movie’s Noir Alley showcase is that host Eddie Muller won’t even try to pretend that everything he shows is a good movie. Having done this for a while, he’s free to pick and present movies that are, in delicately put, interesting. As in: flawed, botched and disappointing. His introduction to Walk Softly, Stranger was a case in point—dancing around its disappointing finale before talking about it in more detail after the film was over. And he’s right—this is an interesting and flawed film. What begins on solid ground for a film noir—an ex-criminal (Joseph Cotten) trying to escape his past after meeting a small-town woman (Alida Valli) he can care for—is completely undone by a conclusion that abruptly shifts to action thrills complete with a dismayingly atonal happy ending that barely makes sense in the context of what preceded it. All this happens abruptly, catching unprepared viewers by surprise and leaving them to bemoan, “What was that?” as the film wraps up. There are many levels of wrongness with that ending—starting with the idea that a film noir protagonist can ride off happily in the sunset rather than pay for his crime, but coming down all the way to a climactic sequence that suggests death only to inexplicably change its mind moments later. Yes, this was all due to studio interference—an attempt by Howard Hugues and RKO to capitalize on the success of The Third Man (shot after this one, but featuring the same male/female leads) by going for a broad happy ending. But in doing so, Walk Softly, Stranger ends up as a more convincing illustration of a noir fundamental—the happy ending is not in the cards for noir. What would have been an entirely forgettable thriller ends up an interesting botched attempt at “improving” the genre… to its detriment.