Search - I See a Dark Stranger on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1946 DVD Release: 01/21/2003 Format: DVD - Black and White SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 52 mins Studio: Homevision Members Wishing: 2 Genres: Spy Film, Thriller, War Spy Film

I See a Dark Stranger manages to be both an absorbing espionage yarn and a slyly amusing send-up of the entire genre. Deborah Kerr is terrific as Irish colleen Bridie Quilty, raised from childhood to despise the British and everything they stand for. Bridie's anglophobia proves useful to Nazi spy Miller (Raymond Huntley), who hopes to use the girl to help him steal the plans for the D-day invasion. Playing her "Mata Hari" role to the hilt, Bridie wholeheartedly throws herself into a world of clandestine meetings and coded messages, certain that by helping the Germans she is also helping Mother Ireland. Eventually she realizes the error of her ways, enabling her to turn the tables on Miller and his co-conspirators. Trevor Howard co-stars as David Baynes, with whom the impulsive Bridie falls in love despite his English forebears. I See a Dark Stranger was released in the U.S. as The Adventuress. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Deborah Kerr - Birdie Quilty
Trevor Howard - Lt. David Baynes
Raymond Huntley - Miller
Garry Marsh - Capt. Goodhusband
Tom Macauley - Lt. Spanswick

"For the subject of a neutral country, aren't you being belligerent?" a character asks Deborah Kerr's Bridie Quilty, a naïve would-be Irish patriot, in an early scene of I See a Dark Stranger. "There's nothing belligerent about it -- it's entirely a question of which side I'm neutral on." It's a line worthy of a good Hollywood thriller, but it's also almost too clever in its mix of defiance and semantics for a Hollywood movie of its era, and it sets the delicately balanced tone -- equal measures of seriousness and knowing humor -- that carries this movie. Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat's I See a Dark Stranger (originally released in America as The Adventuress) comes to DVD courtesy of Home Vision Entertainment in a very crisp-looking edition. Although the Rank Organization, which financed it, has justifiably achieved renown for the color films that were generated from its studios in the mid-'40s, it was the finely photographed black-and-white features such as this that made up the vast bulk of its output, and they were not to be dismissed. Among them are such excellent works as Brief Encounter, Green for Danger, I Know Where I'm Going.
A clever thriller with comedic elements made by the same two writer/producers who wrote Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes and Carol Reed's Night Train to Munich, I See a Dark Stranger arrives on DVD with a clean, sharp image, so much so that every strand of Deborah Kerr's hair seems visible in high resolution in her close-ups. Overall the disc isn't a match for the very best black-and-white restorations of the period -- there are very mild visible flaws in the film elements, principally very light staining in a few spots -- but it is transferred so cleanly and has such rich contrast that one can even pick out details in the dark, natural half-light of the train-boarding scene nine minutes into the movie, and it runs circles around television presentations of the movie from as recently as the 1980s. Furthermore, the sound is a marked improvement over any prior home-viewing version of the film: every nuance of William Alwyn's delightful score is presented cleanly and in sharp relief, along with the softest parts of Kerr's voice-over narration on the train ride. The audio is so crisp that even those who have an intimate knowledge of Alwyn's work could find details in the music that they have previously missed. The film has been given 22 chapters, of which the only point worth disputing is the combining of the train ride and Bridie's arrival at the museum into a single chapter. The only bonus feature is the original British trailer, which tries to emphasize the thriller aspects of the plot and bypasses the comedy -- one imagines that audiences were surprised and delighted by all of the plot elements that they found surrounding Kerr's delectable form. The disc opens automatically onto a simple menu that is very easy to maneuver around. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide