AllMovie

Walk Softly, Stranger is a disappointing movie, the kind of film one watches and keeps wishing it would just get a little better but which never does. This keeps the viewer interested for the first two-thirds of the film, but in the third act, things just fall to pieces, and the ending is unbelievable and simply wrong. Stranger also suffers because it falls between two genre stools, trying to be both a noir thriller and a romance. It's possible to be both these things, but Stranger can't manage this neat hat trick, and is therefore satisfying as neither. It does have a strange melancholic air about it that is appealing, and the "game" of guessing whether Chris is being sincere at any moment holds the viewer's interest for quite a while, but these can't sustain the whole film. As Chris, Joseph Cotten is good and certainly knows how to play individual scenes, but he seems a little constrained and his performance doesn't come together the way it wants to. The part also can't help but remind viewers of his much better work in Shadow of a Doubt. Alida Valli does better, but she can't quite overcome the triteness of some of her material. Only Spring Byington manages to rise above things and deliver a really impressive performance.