‘House of Strangers’: Love Is the Truest Inheritance

Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s film preceded Copolla’s about gangsters, and is the superior moral statement.

Lucca (Tito Violo, L) and Gino Monetti (Edward G. Robinson), in “House of Strangers.” 20th Century Fox

NR | 1h 41m | Drama | 1949

Aesthetically, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “House of Strangers” may have inspired Francis Ford Coppola’s, “The Godfather,” but Mankiewicz’s film is the superior moral statement. No matter how arresting Coppola’s film is, he merely shows a masculinity that’s misguided. Mankiewicz rebukes it as misguided and adds that it needn’t be.