The first of four thrillers in which director Rowland V. Lee exploited Basil Rathbone's talent for nervous hysteria, Love from a Stranger is the true ancestor of Gaslight, and the definitive example of the husband-trying-to-murder-his-wife (or drive her mad, which is even more fun) school of melodrama. Written by both Agatha Christie and Frank Vosper, a noted actor-writer whose own mysterious disappearance from an ocean liner was never solved, it betrays its stage origins, but the dialogue and performances are so good that it hardly matters, and its climax reaches a pitch of tension quite denied in its inferior Hollywood remake. Although the play is opened up a trifle and there are other players involved, it is essentially a long, sustained duel between Basil Rathbone, in one of his best roles, and Ann Harding. William K. Everson