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I See a Dark Stranger | Year: 1946 Classification: Mystery / Suspense Actors/Actresses: - Deborah Kerr - Trevor Howard - Raymond Huntley Following where Hitchcock first trod... Deborah Kerr and Trevor Howard costar in this unusual spy story, wherein Kerr plays a young Irish lass, raised on her dad's romantic self-mythologizing "war stories" of the 1916 Irish rebellion, who goes to England to fight against the British oppressors. It being the middle of World War Two, she decides the enemy of her enemy is her friend, and she hooks up with a German spymaster, gathinging information from the jovial soldiers that frequent the local pub... She comes around, of course, once she realizes that passing on the information about the upcoming D-Day invasion may cost the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers, but in between she is a uniquely unsympathetic protagonist. It's amazing that this particular story would have been filmed so close after the close of the war, when the extent of German barbarity haad been so clearly exposed; the bigger point seems to have been to diffuse and sideline Irish political separatism... Still, as a silly spy film, this is reasonably enjoyable... it's just a little weird around the edges. Fun thriller from a classic British era The team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliatt specialized in smart, witty, quintessentially British thrillers of the sort that made Hitchcock's name-- and not only did they write one of Hitchcock's first big successes, The Lady Vanishes, Gilliatt really invented the minigenre of the droll train-based thriller with 1932's Rome Express while Hitchcock was still learning his trade. (After The Lady Vanishes they wrote its sort-of-sequel, Night Train to Munich, which I for one think is even better.) Deborah Kerr stars as an Irish lass with stars in her eyes for the Irish cause, which get her caught in the intrigues of a Nazi spy (the scarily cold Raymond Huntley). It was Kerr's breakthrough performance (and one that may seem familiar since Maureen O'Hara copies it closely in The Quiet Man). Especially compared with today's sub-Republic-serial action films, the suspense scenes are well thought out and present believable problems (how DO you get rid of a body from the second floor of an inn in a small town where everyone knows you?), and the comic touches (note the surreal "twin" bureaucrats) are sharply observed. The presence of Trevor Howard as a light romantic lead in this film reminds us that as British thrillers got more serious after the war-- in such films as The Third Man, The Clouded Yellow and They Made Me a Fugitive, all starring Howard and making use of his dour, seen-awful-things-in-wartime manner-- Launder and Gilliatt weren't really capable of following. But when it comes to amusingly British, skillfully exciting entertainments in the 1930s and 1940s, they were first-rate and deserve to be better remembered. Buy I See A Dark Stranger at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on I See A Dark Stranger Search with the Priority Search Engine on I See A Dark Stranger This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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