I See a Dark Stranger (B&W)

Starring:Deborah Kerr, Trevor Howard, Raymond Huntley, Michael Howard, Norman Shelley, Liam Redmond, Brefni O'Rorke, James Harcourt, George Woodbridge, Garry Marsh, Olga Lindo, Tom Macaulay, David Ward, Harry Hutchinson (II), Harry Webster, Eddie Golden, Marie Ault, Humphrey Heathcote, John Salew, David Tomlinson
Director: Frank Launder
Studio: Homevision
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

You know Deborah Kerr as the finely regal actress of her later career; you may not know the vibrant, sexy redhead of younger days. I See a Dark Stranger should rectify that. (But do also see the Powell-Pressburger triumphs that bookend it, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and Black Narcissus.) This delightful picture comes from the deft duo of Frank Launder and Sydney Gilliat, who excelled at comic suspense. Kerr plays Bridie Quilty, an Irish lass bred to loathe the English, who ends up spying for the Germans during World War II (only because they're against the English and the IRA wouldn't take her). This curious premise leads to delicious intrigue, as Bridie finds herself dumping a body off an English seacoast cliff and chasing around the Isle of Man with two bald policemen named Goodhusband and Spanswick. Trevor Howard tags along, but this is Kerr's show, and she is smashing. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews:

Comedic thriller.......2006-12-04

I See a Dark Stranger is a curious if wildly entertaining British thriller from 1946, just after the war. It stars Deborah Kerr as Bridie Quilty, a rambunctious Irish girl fed on her father's tales of resisting the English in the teens. Growing a hatred towards the English in general (especially Oliver Cromwell, which becomes a recurring gag), she decides to join the IRA at the height of WWII. Naturally, instead of the IRA she ends up getting involved into all sorts of unfortunate Nazi plots and the fate of England more or less ends up in her hands. Trevor Howard, as a romantic interest she is forced to become involved with due to her duties as a spy, tails her throughout the movie. The movie is noteworthy mainly for its excellent, lovingly detailed script, which manages to balance humour with suspense (although not perfectly) as well as the superb performance of Deborah Kerr. She is ravishing at 25, and the film provides her an endless variety of scenes in which to strut her considerable acting talents. There is something of an overuse of first-person narration throughout the film, although that, and the many dark scenes, give the movie a creepy noirish feel (although it is by no means a noir). The charming Trevor Howard and the rest of the supporting cast are quite good too, although Kerr retains the spotlight throughout.

Very good if not outstanding.......2005-09-24

This comparatively little known film may not bear comparison with the very best, but it certainly does not justify the comparative neglect it has been subject to, at least in this country. It is a very satisfying comedy-thriller, and well worth watching, with a good performance, as usual, from Deborah Kerr.

A War-Time Thriller That's Romantic and Funny.......2004-10-27

This is one of a series of first-rate British movies Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat wrote and, in a number of cases, directed starting in the 1930s.

Deborah Kerr plays Bridie Quilty, a young Irish woman who was brought up to despise the British. Its 1944 and Ireland has stayed neutral in WWII. When she reaches her majority she is determined to join the IRA and fight against the Brits. She travels to Dublin to seek out the IRA and is rebuffed, but is recruited by, unknown to her, a German spy. Raymond Huntley, a great English character actor, plays the spy. He has her finding out information as a worker in a pub, next to a British army base just across the border. Unexpectedly, she meets a young Army offficer (Trevor Howard) who is in counter-intelligence, and then comes across a great secret which, she is told, must be delivered to an agent she thinks is fighting against the Brits on behalf of the Irish, but is actually a sleeper Nazi. Bridie's adventures are many, some romantic (although she can't stand the idea of falling for a British officer), some funny, some dangerous. The conclusion, where if Bridie is caught on the Northern Ireland side of the border she'll be hanged, but if she can cross the border to Ireland she'll be safe, is a nice little drama of its own. It causes a quandry of conscience for Howard, and is resolved neatly.

This is a charming and expertly made movie. Deborah Kerr, at 24, brings glowing naivete to the part. After Kerr made this and Black Narcissus (1947), she was off to the USA.

Launder and Gilliat's films read like a roster of quality and craftsmanship. Among them are The Lady Vanishes, Night Train to Munich, The Rake's Progress, Green for Danger, The Belles of St. Trinian's, The Green Man, Geordie and Young Mr. Pitt. Except for The Lady Vanishes, none are out on DVD in the U.S. and should be.

Following where Hitchcock first trod..........2003-10-24

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.......2003-07-11

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.

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