AllMovie

This film is a typically stark Scandinavian melodrama in which a lonely widow takes in a stranger, later revealed to be the man who killed her husband. Set on a cold, deserted beach in the aftermath of the German occupation (the husband was a member of the resistance, the stranger a German collaborator), this serious, well-mounted film ran into censorship problems prior to its April 1965 New York premiere. The reason was the seduction scene, filmed in medium-close shots, and with the woman fully clothed. Less objectionable, apparently, was the closing scene during which the woman kills her eerie intruder. A two-character play filmed by the unfairly forgotten Johan Jacobsen, A Stranger Knocks offers deeply felt portrayals by Carl Theodor Dreyer regulars Preben Lerdorff-Rye and Birgitte Federspiel.