The Stranger's Hand

The Stranger's Hand (Italian: La mano dello straniero) is a 1954 British-Italian thriller drama film directed by Mario Soldati and starring Trevor Howard, Alida Valli and Richard Basehart. An international co-production, it is based on the draft novel with the same name written by Graham Greene. The plot follows the son of a British MI5 agent kidnapped in Venice by agents of Yugoslavia as he searches for his father.

The first two chapters of The Stranger's Hand had been entered by Greene anonymously under a pseudonym to a competition in the New Statesman to write a book in the style of Graham Greene – a competition in which Greene was amused to win second prize. Soldati had seen the chapters and persuaded Greene to complete the novella to make the basis for a film. Greene expanded it to 30 pages of a "film story", on which Giorgio Bassani and Guy Elmes completed the screenplay.

Cast

 * Trevor Howard as Major Roger Court
 * Alida Valli as Roberta Gleukovitch
 * Richard Basehart as Joe Hamstringer
 * Richard O'Sullivan as Roger Court
 * Eduardo Ciannelli as Dr. Vivaldi
 * Arnoldo Foà as Commissioner
 * Stephen Murray as British Consul in Venice
 * Guido Celano as Chief Constable
 * Nerio Bernardi as Vincenzo
 * Giorgio Costantini as 	Pescovitch
 * Angelo Cecchelin as Luza
 * Nino Vechina as 	First Killer
 * Armando Papette as 	Second Killer
 * Giovanni Karuz as Third Killer
 * Joan Butterfield as 	Mrs. Harrington
 * Alessandro Paulon as Morgan
 * Remington Olmsted as 	Ramondo