I See a Dark Stranger

In May 1944, during World War II, a young Irishwoman, Bridie Quilty, turns 21 and sets out to fulfil a lifelong dream born in listening to her late father's stories of the Irish Revolution. She leaves her rural village and goes to Dublin. On the way, she shares a train compartment with J. Miller, but believing him to be English, she is very brusque with him. On arrival, she seeks out Michael O'Callaghan, a famous ex-radical her father had supposedly fought alongside in 1916 during the Easter Rising. She asks him to help her join the Irish Republican Army. However, he has mellowed as the situation in Ireland has improved and tries to dissuade her.

Miller turns out to be a Nazi secret agent, assigned to break fellow spy Oscar Pryce out of a British prison in Devon. When he runs into Bridie again, he recruits her. She gets a job at The George, a hotel and bar in nearby Wynbridge Vale, and becomes acquainted with a sergeant, who unwittingly provides her with information about the prisoner's impending transfer to London.

This is the opportunity that Miller has been waiting for. However, he is disturbed by the arrival of Lieutenant David Baynes, a British officer on leave. Since there is little to attract anyone to the town, he suspects the newcomer of being a counter-intelligence agent. He orders Bridie to distract Baynes on the day of the transfer.

Miller frees Pryce. Meanwhile Bridie goes on a date with Baynes to make sure he is out of the way. When she discovers Baynes is there to gather historical material for his thesis on Oliver Cromwell, whom Bridie detests for his conquest of Ireland, she dashes off, much to Baynes' confusion.

Shot fleeing from a roadblock, Pryce tells Miller he hid a notebook on the Isle of Man. Miller goes to Bridie's room and reveals that he too has been shot. He gives her the location to pass along. Unwilling to risk seeing a doctor, he tells her to dispose of his body after he is dead, which she does.

Bridie boards a train as instructed, but she witnesses her contact, an elderly woman, being arrested. Not knowing what to do, Bridie decides to return home. However, she encounters David, who followed her. Her plan to return to Ireland is foiled when a newspaper announces a ban on travel to that country.

She decides to retrieve the book herself. She is trailed by David and a German spy. Bridie figures out that the cryptic information gives the location of the imminent D-Day invasion, which could result in the death of thousands of Allied soldiers—including Irishmen serving in the British armed forces. She decides to burn the book. David saves her from being arrested as Miller's confederate, and after telling Bridie that he loves her, she tells him what she has done.

Bridie tries to turn herself in, but German agents kidnap her. When David tracks them down, he is abducted as well. When she refuses to tell what she knows, the couple are taken to Ireland. They hide in a funeral procession, but the "mourners" are actually smugglers trying to enter Northern Ireland. When an alarm clock hidden in the coffin goes off at the border crossing, the ensuing confusion enables the prisoners to escape. David telephones for the police from a pub, mistakenly believing that they are still in Ireland, where Bridie would merely be interned. When he realises that they are actually in Northern Ireland, and that Bridie could be shot as a spy, he tries to persuade her to flee across the nearby border, but she insists on staying with him. Then, they hear on the radio that D-Day has begun. Her information now useless, she escapes. David discovers the spies in a room upstairs and a fight breaks out. The police arrive and arrest all.

After the war, Bridie and David wed, but their marriage gets off to a rocky start when David books them in at a hotel called "The Cromwell Arms" for their honeymoon night.

Cast notes:

• Katie Johnson was a veteran of many Ealing Studios comedies. She is best known for her role in The Ladykillers.

Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, who were the writers for Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 film The Lady Vanishes, formed Individual Pictures in 1945, with the intention of taking turns as director on the films they produced. I See a Dark Stranger was the first of ten films released by the company.[1]

I See a Dark Stranger was filmed at various locations, including Dublin, Dundalk and around Wexford in Ireland, Dunster in England and the Isle of Man.[1][2]

During production, the rumour among crew members was that a close relationship had developed between the "handsome, young" cinematographer Wilkie Cooper and Deborah Kerr. If there was an affair, however, it was short-lived, as Kerr married Spitfire pilot Tony Bartley almost immediately after the film was in the can.[3]

The film was released in the United States under the title The Adventuress, to good reviews but modest box office. Bosley Crowther, the critic for the New York Times said that the film was "keenly sensitive and shrewd."[1]

In 1990 Sidney Gilliat thought the film "must have broken even now."[4]

Deborah Kerr won a 1947 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress for her performances in Black Narcissus and I See a Dark Stranger.[5][6]

Notes

Bibliography

• Vermilye, Jerry. The Great British Films. 1978, Citadel Press, ISBN 0-8065-0661-X pp 94–96

• I See a Dark Stranger at IMDb
• I See a Dark Stranger at AllMovie
• I See a Dark Stranger at the TCM Movie Database
• Film review at Variety
• I See a Dark Stranger at Screenonline