Henry Jaglom: What happened to her?
Orson Welles: She was the biggest star in Europe. She was huge during the fascist period, all through the war. In Rome. Then she was taken up by Selznick. Selznick destroyed her. He brought her to America, tried to make a big star out of her here, thought he'd have another Bergman, and put her in three-
Henry Jaglom: After 'The Third Man'?
Orson Welles: No, 'The Third Man' was in the middle.
Henry Jaglom: What else did he put her in?
Orson Welles: A terrible trial movie, 'The Paradine Case'. And something else terrible."
-"My Lunches With Orson"
Made before "The Third Man", and then shelved for two years until after that picture's success, "Walk Softly, Stranger" may not be "terrible" as Orson described it, but it's certainly not "great" or perhaps even "very good". Instead it's a serviceable noir romance which suffers when compared to "The Third Man", and that other movie featuring Cotten as a criminal in small-town America: Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt".
The picture opens with Cotten arriving in a white-picket fence Ohio town. Slowly and methodically he cons his way into a place to live and a job at the local factory. Valli, is the wheelchair-bound daughter of the owner, who Cotten romances and eventually falls in love with. Cotten leaves town briefly to pull one last job, robbing a gambling joint, and then returns. As one might predict, Cotten's criminal dealings eventually catch up with him, and he is left to make the choice between giving into his past, or going straight and embracing the wholesome love he has found with Valli.
Robert Stevenson directs, and this is the first non-Disney picture of his I've seen. I'm much more familiar with his later work for Uncle Walt. Growing up I endlessly watched "Bedknobs and Broomsticks". As someone who owns "The Gnome Mobile" on DVD, and who watched "The Island at the Top of the World" about twice a month at the video store I was once employed by, I have to consider myself a Stevenson fan. He does an OK job with this picture, but there are just too many missed opportunities to consider it a success. There is a scene toward the end where Cotten is trying to get away from the thugs who are out to get him, and he finds himself stuck at a railroad crossing; a train blocking him on one side, the hoods' car on the other. A better director would have squeezed all the tension they could out of this set-up, instead nothing happens and we move on to the next scene. To Stevenson's credit, the scene where Cotten comes home to find his ex-partner missing is downright haunting, and the car-crash sequence at the end is a knock-out display of directorial and editorial toughness. It was probably just a wrong mix of director and material, and as with any Selznick production, we have to take his notoriously hands-on approach into account. As pictures such as "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" and "Mary Poppins" proved, Stevenson was one hell of a director. He became the definitive live-action Disney filmmaker, so it makes sense that film-noir maybe wasn't the best showcase for his talents. Although, I imagine working for Selznick provided a good introduction to the kind of producer interference he would have to live with at the company he worked for during the last 19 years of his career.
The two leads, Cotten and Valli, are good, but never spectacular. Cotten doesn't bring the menace like he does in "Shadow of a Doubt". This is no fault of Cotten's, he's playing the character as written, but unlike Hitchcock's film, this is a story of redemption and it's just not as nasty or interesting. Valli, likewise, does what she can with the material. As a disabled woman learning to live and love again, she gives a fine performance. There are some quite nice exchanges between the two in Frank Fenton's script.
"We're both failures: your legs, my life."
My favorite performance in the film is by John McIntire in a small role as Cotten's boss. He gives the type of naturalistic performance that made him a top character actor. In his small role, he gives nuance to every scene he's in, even if it's something as simple as eating a sandwich while playing poker or packing his pipe as he talks to a co-worker. These touches add interest to what otherwise are run-of-the-mill scenes (for another great McIntire performance, check out "Scene of the Crime", also available on Warner Archive Instant). Also good in a blink-and-you-miss-it role is an uncredited Will Wright.
This isn't a bad film, but because "The Third Man" and "Shadow of a Doubt" exist, it can't help but pale beside them. The tough, shadowy flashes we get in the last third are promising, but ultimately this picture favors gauzy romance over it's darker elements.
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