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Trevor Howard (Lt David Bayne); Raymond Huntley (Miller); Liam Redmond (Uncle Timothy); Michael Howard (Hawkins)</p><a href="credits.html" class="smg-link">Show full cast and credits</a> </div> </td></tr> <tr><td class="underline" colspan="2"><img src="../../../images/spacer.gif" alt="" width="1" height="1" border="0" /></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2"> <div class="plotsum"> <p>Towards the end of World War II, a passionately patriotic Irishwoman is used as a spy by the Germans (who are seen as less objectionable than the hated British), but repents in time to prevent them finding out about the D-Day landings.</p><a href="synopsis.html" class="smg-link">Show full synopsis</a> </div> </td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2"> <p>In the first two decades after the creation of the Irish Republic in 1921, Irish nationalism rarely featured on British cinema screens. This was initially due to censorship - the <cite class="party">British Board of Film Censors</cite> banned the explicitly nationalistic <cite>Irish Destiny</cite> (Ireland, d. George Dewhurst, 1925), and a decade later <cite>The Dawn</cite> (Ireland/UK, d. Thomas Cooper, 1936) was only passed after cuts, while various Irish projects, such as a biopic of Sir Roger Casement, were vetoed at the script stage.</p> <p>So the very existence of <cite>I See A Dark Stranger</cite> (d. Frank Launder, 1946) is somewhat surprising. Its central character Bridie Quilty, ironically played by English rose <cite class="party">Deborah Kerr</cite>, is a passionate Irish nationalist, whose hatred of the British is such that after failing to join the <cite class="party">IRA</cite>, she willingly agrees to become a spy for the Germans, in the process uncovering information that could wreck the D-Day landings if it were passed on.</p> <p>The background is based on historical fact: although Ireland was technically neutral during the war, it was a natural home for anti-British activity. Although we're introduced early on to Michael O'Callaghan (<cite class="party">Brefni O'Rourke</cite>), a former rebel turned respectable advocate of peaceful negotiation, it's clear from the context that not everyone felt that way.</p> <p>Bridie retains our sympathy thanks to her na茂vet茅 - her views are based largely on romantic fantasy, and throughout the film they're increasingly tested against reality and found wanting. This is especially true when she falls for British intelligence office David Bayne (<cite class="party">Trevor Howard</cite>) and belatedly realises that the Brits aren't all bad - or at least not as bad as the Nazis. She does retain some principles, though, by refusing to stay in the Cromwell Arms.</p> <p>Perhaps wisely, <cite class="party">Launder</cite> and co-writer <cite class="party">Sidney Gilliat</cite> treat this potentially inflammatory material at least partly as a comedy, with strong echoes of their script for <cite class="party">Hitchcock</cite>'s <cite>The Lady Vanishes</cite> (1938). The blend is relatively subtle in the first half, but the second teeters on the edge of farce with the introduction of bumbling bald policemen Goodhusband and Spanswick, spiritual cousins of the earlier film's Charters and Caldicott.</p> <p>The film's relative box-office failure suggests audiences weren't ready for such a light-hearted treatment of very recent events, but it remains a fascinating and often startling piece of work that provides further evidence of how fluently <cite class="party">Launder</cite> and <cite class="party">Gilliat</cite> could package contemporary social and political comment as mainstream entertainment.</p> <p class="bricksrc">Michael Brooke</p> <img src="../../../images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="10" border="0" alt="" /> </td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2"></td></tr> </table></td> <td width="1" class="verticaldots"><img src="../../../images/spacer.gif" alt="" width="1" height="1" border="0" /></td> <td width="312" valign="top"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr><td colspan="2"><img src="../../../images/spacer.gif" alt="" width="312" height="20" border="0" /></td></tr> <tr><td><img src="../../../images/spacer.gif" alt="" width="3" height="1" border="0" /></td><td><p class="smg">Click titles to see or read more <img src="../../../images/film/icon_arrow.gif" class="noblock" border="0" alt="" /></p></td></tr> <tr><td class="underline" colspan="2"><img src="../../../images/spacer.gif" alt="" width="1" height="1" border="0" /></td></tr> <tr><td colspan="2"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="rh-item"><tr> <td valign="top" rowspan="15"><img src="../../../images/gt/GT_film_clips.jpg" class="rh-thumbpic" alt="" border="0" /></td> <td class="rh-headcell-film"><span class="thumbhead-film">Video Clips</span></td> </tr> <tr><td><img src="../../../images/spacer.gif" alt="" width="1" height="3" border="0" /></td></tr> <tr><td><a href="../../../media/stream.jsp?id=411000" class="clipmenu-link"><img src="../../../images/icon_film.gif" alt="" vspace="2" class="clipmenu-icon-right" border="0" />1. 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