Contre-espionnage

Reading the synopsis of They Met In The Dark I was expecting quite a different film. The plot outline made it sound incredibly serious and this was wartime Great Britain.

Instead I got a rather lighthearted treatment of the plight of courtmartialed Naval Commander James Mason. Seems as though he was given a Mickey Finn and left with false orders in his pocket that led to his ship being sunk by the Nazis. Now cashiered from the Royal Navy, Mason's looking for answers.

So is Joyce Howard who is over from Canada looking for her girlfriend who has disappeared. She finds the girlfriend's corpse with Mason in a mysterious house.

After this They Met In The Dark is a variation on what Alfred Hitchcock did much better with The Thirty Nine Steps. In fact the method used by the bad guy spies for transmitting messages involves a theatrical performer.

I guess I'm not used to seeing James Mason in material as light as this. He and Howard do have some good chemistry. When he would do Hitchcock in North By Northwest he was not the light leading man there.

Not one of Mason's classic films, but something different.

A rather fishy intrigue going at any lengths to cause as much confusion as possible, as it basically only consists of loose ends all over, but it all starts at sea in the second world war, then proceeds to a court martial where James Mason appears to be convicted and dismissed from service, whereupon he shaves his beard and tries to get hold of a girl 'Mary' who has some awful things to tell him, which she never gets a chance to, as the old lorn house she has made an appointment with him in is empty except for a dead girl with a mysterious paper note clutched in her hand, which body is discovered by another girl, leading them to some circle of spies disguised as an entertainment company with mind readers, harmonica players and another singing girl, while James Mason is more interested in one girl than another, or is it the other way around? Anyway, there is nothing wrong with the acting or the intrigue-making, James Mason is always worth enjoying, but that's about all in this film - the death mystery in the desert house provides the only excitement, which never is satisfied, as the body disappears and never is recovered... Is it a comedy, a satire, just an entertainment made for kicks, is it seriously meant at all, or was it just made to fill some gap? The film inspires as many questions as an almost total lack of answers, but it provides at least some momentary entertainment...

This film is worth watching for Karel Lamac's direction. Born in the former Czechoslovakia and unknown to me I would very much like to discover his silent films. In this rather pedestrian film of murder, a dismissed man from the navy due to very dubious reasons, Lamac keeps the pace and adds the occasional visual flourishes that are exciting. There is an old dark house, a fleeting masked figure and a dead woman's body found by another woman which is visually stunning. The lighting has elements of Expressionism that heightens the horror, and in general the film is fascinating to watch. James Mason plays the dismissed man, and of course there has to be a heroine played adequately by Joyce Howard. Patricia Medina disappears far too quickly, and in my opinion I longed to see more of her, and would I feel have been better in the lead female role. Style wins over content here, but as Karel Lamac's style is so good the film is worth watching. A distinct European touch to very British material.

I know nothing about Karel Lamac, other than he was born in Prague, captial of the former Czechoslovakia, and he directed THEY MET IN THE DARK at the height of WWII.

The script by Anatole Grunwald and well known British supporting actor, Miles Malleson, rates less than memorable, as does the acting by young James Mason, David Farrar and Joyce Howard (best of all, good old Edward Rigby as Mason's sidekick). Not that photography and art direction lift the film to any unusual heights, either, but in the end I will always remember it as an enjoyable ally vs axis spy yarn.

There is a side magician/singing show featuring Phyllis Stanley, a harmonica player who sounds like Larry Adler, and a couple of rabbit- and pup-producing artists which lightens the atmosphere.

No masterpiece, but I liked it. 7/10.

This spy film seems to have used every cliché from spy films made earlier in World War 2.In particular it seems to have taken much of the story line of "Let George Do It".In particular it uses the encoding of messages into music.There is the fake court martial ling of Mason,the drugging of a signals officer and a spy ring in a port,and of course the obligatory missing corpse.All done in a most lacklustre fashion.At just over 90 minutes the story drags along.Compare it with Hitchcocks " Saboteur" made the same year in Hollywood.It looks as if the film was originally longer but was cut before release.i was looking forward to seeing George Robey but his scenes as a pawnbroker were obviously cut.I think that Mason should have based his character on Formby's so he could have ended the film with a cheerful "turned out nice again".