Deborah Kerr, Trevor Howard and Raymond Huntley star in this noirish wartime thriller which, says David Parkinson, showcases Launder & Gilliat's happy knack of combining wit and suspense.
As they had demonstrated with their script for Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938), Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat had the happy knack of combining wit and suspense.
But this noirish thriller even more audaciously put a humorous spin on the contentious themes of Irish nationalism and Fifth Column activity in wartime Britain. Thus, while Manx coppers Garry Marsh and Tom Macaulay provide the comic relief, a palpable sense of danger pervades colleen Deborah Kerr's encounters with quisling Raymond Huntley and intelligence officer Trevor Howard.
Ultimately, her heart rules her head. Yet, for all her romantic notions, she is quite prepared to dispose of a dead body over a cliff and travel to the Isle of Man to retrieve secrets that could scupper D-Day.
Launder maintains a brisk pace, but he also makes fine use of Wilkie Cooper's lowering monochrome imagery to reinforce the menacing mood and make even picturesque settings seem sinister. The ensemble playing is assured, but Kerr particularly impresses as she is won over to Howard's cause without entirely betraying her beliefs.
Directed by Frank Launder and written by Sidney Gilliat, I See A Dark Stranger is a suspense-filled, entertaining spy drama about a highly-strung Irish girl, Bridie Quilty (Deborah Kerr) whose father delights in spinning tall tales about his role in the 1916 uprising against the English.
When Bridie comes of age she decides to leave her rural home and seek out the IRA, but she unwittingly falls in with a German spy called Miller (Raymond Huntley), believing that he is part of the IRA. Miller recruits Bridie and finds her a job working in a sleepy village pub near a British military prison. But when British Army Officer David Byrne (Trevor Howard) arrives in the village to recuperate, he falls in love with the quarrelsome Bridie. Suspicious that Byrne is an intelligence officer Miller decides that he needs to be eliminated and asks Bridie to help him...
