Stranger on the Prowl

Made under its original title of Imbarco a mezzanotte (Departure at Midnight), Stranger on the Prowl (1952) was a film born in the era of the House Un-American Activities Committee's infamous Hollywood Blacklist, which banned anyone from working in the film or television industry who was or had been a Communist, or was suspected of being a Communist. Those in the industry lived in fear of having their names appear in Red Channels, a publication that listed those who were banned. At the time that director Joseph Losey left the United States for Italy to make Stranger on the Prowl, he had not yet been blacklisted. However, during production, he learned that the HUAC was investigating him and until his name could be cleared, he was banned from the industry. Losey would later learn that this was due to his refusing to direct the anti-Communist film I Married a Communist (1949), and because of his friendships with blacklisted producer Adrian Scott and writer Bertolt Brecht. The American government didn't restrict its activities to the United States as Norma Barzman, wife of Stranger on the Prowl screenwriter Ben Barzman, later recalled, 'We knew what [Losey] had to contend with during the filming - including CIA types in Italy watching him." It didn't help that when Losey arrived in Italy to begin work on Stranger on the Prowl, the national Communist Party paper, L'Unita devoted two pages to him. At the same time that Losey was formally under investigation and Stranger on the Prowl was slated to open in the United States, the American Federation of Labor had demanded a ban on European films made by "communists identified by HUAC." This forced the films' distributor, United Artists, to enlist their representative, Arthur Krim, to ask that the film's title be changed and to have both Losey's and Barzman's names removed from the credits. Instead, credit went to "Andrea Forzano" as both writer and director. Andrea Forzano was, in reality, the son of Giovacchino Forzano, the head of Tirrenia Studios (and former friend of Mussolini) where the film's principal photography was shot. An American-Italian-French coproduction, Stranger on the Prowl was adapted by Barzman from an original story by the leftist French novelist Noël Calef, La bouteille du lait (The Bottle of Milk). In it, veteran film and stage actor Paul Muni stars as the unnamed Stranger With a Gun, who is on the lam from the authorities with a price on his head after accidentally killing a man. While he evades the police, the Stranger runs into a street kid named Giacomo, (Vittorio Mazzunchelli - aka "Manunta") who has stolen a bottle of milk and is likely headed for a life that will either see him killed or behind bars. Muni's participation in the film was not due to any political sympathies or because of the Blacklist - his first concern was working. The 1950s were harder for Muni than for his contemporaries from Hollywood's Golden Age, a time when he no longer commanded the same interest from studios and audiences as younger stars rose and television was stealing the ticket-buying public. Along with Muni in the cast are Joan Lorring as Angela, Luisa Rossi as Giacomo's mother and Aldo Silvani as Peroni. Losey would later say that the creation of the film was a "hodgepodge" of Communist filmmakers working with a Fascist head of studio, cameraman Henri Alekan, who had worked with Jean Renoir in the 1930s and, "Italian and French actors who could not speak English and had to learn their lines phonetically." Location shooting was done at various locations in Tuscany, including Pisa and Livorno. SOURCES: Hide in Plain Sight. (n.d.). Major Film Directors of the American and British Cinema. (n.d.). Napoli/New York/Hollywood. (n.d.). Stranger on the Prowl (1952) - Andrea Forzano, Joseph Losey | Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.allmovie.com/movie/v111980 Stranger on the Prowl (1952). (1952, March 12). Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043671/?ref_=ttrel_rel_tt By Lorraine LoBianco