[We Were Strangers is a] collective study of men in a crisis. (p. 82)
Huston has … conceived his film as a melodrama—which has earned him the disapproval of those who consider that melodrama should be reserved for "unimportant" subjects like The Maltese Falcon, and who feel that it vitiates anything more "serious". Nevertheless, there are many major dramatic and literary works highly seasoned with melodrama…. The flaws in We Were Strangers are in details of the treatment, not imposed by the choice of treatment itself. In some ways it is carefully stylised: in the striking camera-work by Russell Metty with its powerful groupings and broad contrasts; in the dialogue's consistent convention of broken accents and slightly formal, slightly unrealistic quality, most of the time highly effective and once or twice too declamatory (China's "There are no marble vaults for our dead…"). None of these conventions muffles or holds up the drama. Structurally it is a taut, exact, almost flawless piece of work. It lacks depth at times because of Huston's attitude to people; he concentrates his passion on physical tension and details, on exterior climaxes, and the rest he observes and records, excitingly but imperviously. Thus the comradeship of the men, whose theme is so beautifully stated in a brief sequence at night when Guillarmo improvises a calypso on his guitar, is later assumed rather than conveyed—and the effect of their parting, after the plan has failed, loses some of its force. The same limitations of feeling are apparent in his handling of the love-affair, which is never false but remains undeveloped. (pp. 83-4)
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