Finger of Guilt is the American release title of Joseph Losey's Intimate Stranger (1956), a psychological thriller that the American expatriate directed in Great Britain after having been branded a Communist sympathizer in Hollywood. After directing one film in Italy and having been asked to leave France, a penniless Losey migrated to England, where he struck a deal with producer Nat Cohen to make three low budget features for a meager payment of £1,000 per film (plus percentages). Scripted by Howard Koch (another Tinseltown refugee, who was "grey listed" after scripting Warner Bros.' Stalin-friendly Mission to Moscow in 1943), Finger of Guilt is Losey's only film about the film industry, the story of an American producer who assumes control of his British father-in-law's film studio, only to become the target of a blackmailer. It is to Losey's credit as an artist that Finger of Guilt was not a roman à clef by which he might have painted himself as a victim but rather an honest appraisal of a man whose fate is tied to his inability to accept responsibility for his past transgressions. While Koch signed the film as "Peter Howard," Losey allowed directorial credit to go to producer Alec C. Snowden, though publicity materials for foreign markets gave him credit as "Joseph Walton." Made on the cheap (with Shepperton Studios playing the fictitious "Commonwealth Studios"), Finger of Guilt nonetheless boasts a topflight supporting cast in Roger Livesey (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp), Mervyn Johns (Dead of Night), and Mary Murphy, Marlon Brando's leading lady in The Wild One (1954).

By Richard Harland Smith