I See a Dark Stranger (released as The Adventuress in the United States) is a British 1946 World War II spy film with touches of light comedy, by the team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, and starring Deborah Kerr and Trevor Howard.
Plot
During World War II, when nationalistic Irishwoman Bridie Quilty (Deborah Kerr) turns 21, she sets out to fulfill her lifelong dream. She leaves her small rural village and goes to Dublin. On the way, she shares a train compartment with J. Miller (Raymond Huntley), but believing him to be English, she is very brusque with him. Once in the city, she seeks out a famous ex-radical her father had supposedly fought alongside, Michael O'Callaghan (Brefni O'Rorke), and asks him to help her join the Irish Republican Army. However, he has mellowed as the situation in Ireland has improved and tries unsuccessfully to dissuade her from her overly romantic notion.
Miller turns out to be a secret agent assigned to break Nazi spy Oscar Pryce (David Ward) out of a British prison. When, by sheer chance, he runs into Bridey again, he recruits her for his task. She gets a job in a pub/hotel near the prison and becomes acquainted with a sergeant, who unwittingly provides her with information about the prisoner's impending transfer.
This is the opportunity that Miller has been waiting for. However, he is disturbed by the arrival of Lieutenant David Baynes (Trevor Howard), 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 therefore orders Bridie to distract Baynes on the day of the transfer by allowing him to take her on a date. It turns out Baynes is merely there to gather material for his thesis on Oliver Cromwell, who Bridey loathes intensely.
Miller succeeds in freeing Pryce, but both are shot fleeing from a roadblock. Pryce tells Miller where he hid a notebook, then remains behind to delay their pursuers. Miller manages to make his way to Bridie and 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. Bridie does so, and afterward boards a train as instructed, but her contact, an elderly woman, (Katie Johnson), is arrested before any exchange can take place. Not knowing what else to do, Bridie decides to return home.
However, she encounters David, who followed her aboard the train, and changes her mind, going to the Isle of Man instead to retrieve the book. She is trailed by David and a German spy (Norman Shelley). The Nazi and his cohorts eventually abduct her. When David tracks them to a boat, he is caught as well. Bridie has figured out that the information they want has to do with the imminent D-Day invasion, which would involve Irishmen, so she refuses to tell what she knows.
The two prisoners are taken to Ireland. The group ends up behind a funeral procession that is actually a smuggling operation transporting alarm clocks, among other things. When one goes off in the coffin at the border crossing to Northern Ireland, Bridie and David escape in the resulting confusion. David phones for the police from a pub, mistakenly believing that they are still in Ireland, where Bridie would merely be interned. When he realizes that they are actually in Northern Ireland, and that Bridie is in danger of being shot as a spy, he tries to convince her to flee, but she insists on staying. Then, they hear on the radio that D-Day has begun. Her information now useless, she escapes across the border. David finds the Nazi spies in the same pub and a fight breaks out. The police arrive and arrest everybody.
After the war ends, Bridie and David get married, but their marriage gets off to a rocky start when David chooses the Cromwell Arms for their honeymoon lodgings.
Cast
- Deborah Kerr as Bridie Quilty
- Trevor Howard as Lieutenant David Baynes
- Raymond Huntley as J. Miller
- Michael Howard as Hawkins
- Norman Shelley as Man in Straw Hat, a German spy
- Liam Redmond as Uncle Timothy
- Brefni O'Rorke as Michael O'Callaghan
- James Harcourt as Grandfather
- George Woodbridge as Walter
- Garry Marsh as Captain Goodhusband, an inept security officer on the Isle of Man
- Tom Macaulay as Lieutenant Spanswick, Goodhusband's more astute subordinate
- Olga Lindo as Mrs. Edwards
- David Ward as Oscar Pryce
- Harry Hutchinson as Chief Mourner/Smuggler
- Harry Webster as Uncle Joe
Cast notes:
Production
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, Devon in England and the Isle of Man.[1][2]
Reception
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]
Awards and honors
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.[3][4]
References
Notes
Bibliography
- Vermilye, Jerry. The Great British Films. 1978, Citadel Press, ISBN 080650661X pp 94–96
External links
