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I See a Dark Stranger

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I See a Dark Stranger
theatrical poster (US)
Directed byFrank Launder
Written bySidney Gilliat
Frank Launder
(story & screenplay)
Wolfgang Wilhelm
Liam Redmond
(add'l dialogue)
Produced bySidney Gilliat
Frank Launder
StarringDeborah Kerr
Trevor Howard
CinematographyWilkie Cooper
Edited byThelma Connell
Music byWilliam Alwyn
Distributed byGeneral Film Distributors (UK)
Eagle-Lion Films (U.S.)
Release dates
  • 4 July 1946 (1946-07-04) (UK)
  • 3 April 1947 (1947-04-03) (U.S.)
Running time
112 minutes (UK)
98 minutes (U.S.)
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

I See a Dark Stranger – released as The Adventuress in the United States – is a 1946 British World War II spy film with touches of light comedy, starring Deborah Kerr and Trevor Howard. It was written and produced by the team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, with Launder directing.

Plot

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It's 1937, in a tiny rural village in Ireland. Young Bridie Quilty has grown up listening to nightly orations from her father regaling pub crowds with his bravery in the Irish Revolution fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with famous radical Michael O'Callaghan in the 1916 Easter Rising. By 1944 Mr. Quilty has passed, and Bridie turns 21, determined to leave on her May birthday for Dublin and carve a life of her own.

On the train she shares a compartment with J. Miller, a plain, inoffensive middle-aged business traveler returned from abroad. Believing him to be English, Bridie is very brusque with him. On arrival, she seeks out O'Callaghan, and asks him to help her join the IRA. However, he has mellowed since the 1921 treaty and its improvements, and tries to dissuade her.

World War II has been raging for five years, and Ireland - Eire - remains neutral. Miller turns out to be a German secret agent, who's entered unencumbered thanks to comparatively lax security there. He shortly gets his assignment, to break a fellow spy out of a British prison in Devon.

When Miller runs into Bridie again, he recruits her. She gets a job at a hotel and bar in nearby Wynbridge Vale, but cannot stop herself from a midnight defacing of a statue of Oliver Cromwell, whom she detests for his brutal conquest of Ireland. Soon she becomes acquainted with a certain sergeant, who unwittingly provides her with information about the prisoner's impending transfer to London.

Miller gets ready to put his plan in motion. However, he is disturbed by the arrival of Lieutenant David Baynes, a British officer claiming to be on leave whom he suspects of being a counter-intelligence agent. He orders Bridie to distract Baynes on the day of the transfer, using whatever wiles or charms that requires. The implication is clear.

Bridie lures Baynes well into the countryside on a date, which indeed turns "romantic". When she discovers Baynes is only in town to gather historical material for his thesis on Cromwell, she dashes off, leaving him confounded. Meanwhile, Miller frees the spy, Pryce.

Fleeing from a roadblock, the pair is cornered and Pryce is shot. With his last he tells Miller he hid a notebook on the Isle of Man. Miller is wounded too, but escapes. When Bridie returns to her room he is there, dying. He gives her the location to pass along up the spy chain. Keeping his head to the last, he tells her to dispose of his body after he is dead, which she does.

Bridie boards a train and seeks to meet her contact on it, who instead is arrested and hauled off. Not knowing what to do, Bridie decides to return home. However, David had followed her, who knew she was mixed up in something and wants to help. Her intention is foiled by the announcement of a ban on travel to Ireland.

She then decides to retrieve the notebook herself. She is trailed by David and a mysterious stranger – with British military intelligence patching the clues together and only a step behind. Successful, she deciphers that it reveals 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 it, and does. David narrowly saves Bridie from being arrested as Miller's confederate, and after confessing his love for her, she tells him what she has done.

Bridie tries to turn herself in, but German agents kidnap her. David tracks them down, but ends up abducted as well. When she refuses to tell what she knows, the couple is taken to Ireland. The Nazi agents seek to hide the group amid a funeral procession, but the "mourners" are actually smugglers trying to enter Northern Ireland, a British possession. Things go wrong at the border crossing, a melee erupts, and the couple escapes in the confusion. Believing that they are still in Ireland, where Bridie would merely be interned, David calls for the police from a pub. When he discovers 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. She stubbornly insists on staying with him and facing the consequences. A BBC broadcast then announces that D-Day has begun, rendering what she knows useless to the Germans. David helps her escape, then discovers the pack of spies in a room upstairs. A fight breaks out, the police arrive, and arrest all.

After the war Bridie and David wed, their troubles seemingly all behind them. Not so! He's booked them into "The Cromwell Arms" for their honeymoon night, which sends his livid bride fleeing and spitting vituperations toward both.

Cast

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Production

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Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, writers who had worked on Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 spy film The Lady Vanishes, formed Individual Pictures in 1945. I See a Dark Stranger was the first of ten films released by the company, with Launder kicking off an intended rotation between the pair as director.[1]

The picture 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, a rumour spread among crew members that a close relationship had developed between the "handsome, young" cinematographer Wilkie Cooper and Deborah Kerr. If it went beyond that, the affair it was short-lived, as Kerr married Spitfire pilot Tony Bartley almost immediately after the film's completion.[3]

Charters and Caldicott, characters Launder and Gilliat first introduced in The Lady Vanishes (1938), were due to appear in the film but due to a disagreement with the actors Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne they were replaced by Captain Goodhusband and Lieutenant Spanswick.[4]

Reception

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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 called the film "keenly sensitive and shrewd."[1]

In 1990 Sidney Gilliat quipped the film "must have broken even now."[5]

Awards and honours

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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.[6][7]

References

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Notes
  1. ^ a b c Feaster, Felicia "I See a Dark Stranger" (TCM article)
  2. ^ IMDb Filming locations
  3. ^ Capua, Michelangelo. Deborah Kerr: A Biography. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2010. pp. 32-33.
  4. ^ https://www.chartersandcaldicott.co.uk/i-say-old-man/frank-launder
  5. ^ Fowler, Roy; Haines, Taffy (15 May 1990). "Interview with Sidney Gilliat" (PDF). British Entertainment History Project. p. 100.
  6. ^ IMDb Awards
  7. ^ Martin, Douglas. "Deborah Kerr, Actress Known for Genteel Grace and a Sexy Beach Kiss, Dies at 86" New York Times (19 October 2007)
Bibliography
  • Vermilye, Jerry. The Great British Films. 1978, Citadel Press, ISBN 0-8065-0661-X pp 94–96
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