People are voting emotionally.

i must have seen a different film!!

hyped garbage

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Most of the things I felt about the film were nicely expressed by the favorable reviewers I read, especially the ones from the U.K.. I remember Deborah Kerr from "the King and I," and sort of remember Trevor Howard from "Mutiny on the Bounty," the excellent 1962 version with Marlon Brando. It was nice to see them much younger in this 1946 film. I agree with the viewers that said this movie was witty, full of surprises and twists and turns and had a beautiful performance from a younger and very beautiful Deborah Kerr. I agreed with the negative criticism of the film that it is a bit long and the plot gets muddled a few times. In its defense, the movie does manage to unmuddle itself the numerous times that it strays from the beaten path. If you like movies that break formulas so much that you can't trust the narration, this is a joy. Actually the narrator tells you in the very beginning of the movie what to expect from the film when he says that he has chosen the wrong place to start his tale and restarts it at a completely different place. Thanks to all the U.K. and other reviewers who filled us in on the many historical and other references in the film.

Deborah Kerr is a determined Irish lass who hates the British and Oliver Cromwell in "I See a Dark Stranger," a 1946 film also starring Trevor Howard and Raymond Huntley. There are also a couple of names in the cast worth noting and watching for: Celia Johnson (The Ladykillers) and Joan Hickson, a well-known Miss Marple is uncredited as a hotel manager.Kerr also narrates the thoughts of her character, Bridey, as she leaves her small town for Dublin in 1944, when she turns 21, determined to join the Irish Republican Army. She is rebuffed but eventually recruited by a German spy. Bridey goes to work at a pub near a British prison for the military. She winds up with a valuable document and, since her contact is dead, she has no idea what to do with it. The Germans are after her and later, so are the bumbling police. On top of this, she has a British officer (Howard) who likes her and seems to be following her around.If you're British or Irish and watch this film, especially if you know something about the British and Irish in World War II, this film will resonate with you in a way that it cannot for Americans. Ireland did not support the British in the war; they remained neutral. That was the country itself. The people in it were divided. The militant part of the IRA bombed different parts of England with the help of the Nazis, for instance. Also, Eamon DeValera, for all the neutrality, didn't want Nazi agents in Ireland and had them arrested."I See a Dark Stranger" vacillates between comedy and drama easily, aided by Kerr's dead serious performance which makes some of the moments even funnier. Bridey has no sense of humor. She's great because an advance by a man doesn't just insult her - it infuriates her - and all of her emotions are that way. The last moment of the film made me laugh out loud. Her thought process told in narration is wonderful. In this movie, she reminds me very much of Maureen O'Hara who often had that same no-nonsense air about her. Trevor Howard gives a performance which offsets Kerr's intensity very well.A young beauty when she made this, this film apparently brought Kerr to the attention of Hollywood as it should have. If you're a fan of hers, don't miss this delightful early performance in this very good movie.

What a compelling Irish colleen Deborah Kerr makes. Her spirited scene with the aged former IRA official creates a vivid emotional contrast, and one that likely resonated across the Emerald Isle. We understand from those first few minutes her inherited resentment of Cromwell and the English conquerers. So it's not surprising when she joins up with a German spy to produce a crackling good tale of intrigue in the movie's first half. The German spy's death scene is truly chilling, along with the suspenseful aftermath.But then the bottom falls out. Maybe the only way to understand the misbegotten second half is that someone else was put in charge, and what had been a melodrama of compelling intensity is suddenly-- of all things-- played for laughs! The shift in mood just plain doesn't work, in my book at least. Abruptly, a police official is turned into a bumbling incompetent, and played broadly enough for heavy-handed comedic effect. And if that weren't enough, the low-brow humor soon descends into bad Mack Sennett type slapstick, including ridiculous prat-falls into a bathtub! Keep in mind the first 45 minutes or so has been played soberly, maybe even grimly, with a tight coherent script that, unfortunately, also falls apart. There must be an inside story here. But whatever it is, the second part ruins a perfectly good spy yarn and undercuts a wonderfully impressive performance by a young Deborah Kerr. I'm not opposed to combining intrigue with humor. Certainly, Hitchcock knew how to merge them effectively. Perhaps with his keen judgment and deft touch, he could have salvaged the results here. But as things stand, The Dark Stranger suffers from what amounts to a terminal bi-polar disorder.

(Some Spoilers) Somewhat light comedy about a very very serious subject, espionage in wartime. The film "I See a Dark Stranger" has to do with a young Irish woman Bridie Quilty, Deborah Kerr, who get's involved with a bunch of German spies. This all happens on the eve of the cross-channel invasion of Hitler's Europe:D-Day.Bridie travels to Dublin from her home in Ballygarry to see her hero former Irish freedom fighter, and now curator and administrator of the Irish Easter Rebellion Museum, Michael O'Callaghn played by Brenfi O'Rorke. Shocked at O'Callaghn's benign attitude towards the hated British Bridie is soon spotted by German spy, whom she met on the train, Mr. Miller, Raymond Huntley.With her violent dislike of the British Empire in what it did and is still doing, in occupying Northern Ireland, to her beloved land of Eire Bridie falls right in with Miller and his fellow German spies. Traveling with Miller to the English village of Wynbridge Bridie gets a job as a domestic in an effort to help Miller get a fellow German spy Oscar Pryce, David Ward, freed from British military detention.At Wynbridge Bridie meets British officer Let. David Baynes, Trevor Howard,who for some strange reason, Bridie is anything but friendly with the hated British soldier, falls in love with her. The rest of the movie has Bridie in trying to stick it to the British Empire, by helping it's mortal enemy Germany win the war, slowly realize what she's doing and how it may well have her end up facing a British firing squad!Traveling to the Isle of Man Bridie recovers, hidden in the Isle's Parliament Building, a booklet that the now deceased German spy Miller, who was earlier killed by the British Tommies, ordered her to. The booklet is to later be returned to the German Ambassador to Irland in Dublin who will transmit it's secret coded message back to Berlin. Its then that the naive Bridie is shocked to find out that the booklet's secret code reveals the time and place of the allied invasion of Europe! Knowing that the lives of thousands of allied soldiers, including many of Irish ancestry, are at stake if the Germans get a hold of it Bridie, in a sudden change of heart, burns the booklet in her hotel rooms fireplace. The movie then changes from a spy thriller to a 1930's like screwball comedy with the bumbling and totally ineffective German spies providing most of the laughs!Well paced and very entertaining thriller/comedy with both Deborah Kerr and Trevor Howard, as Bridie and David, caught up with circumstances beyond their control. David who's in love with Bridie is now forced to turn her over, after she confessed to him, to the British Military Authorities as a spy that would mean curtain death for her.As much as the movies extremely contrived ending is it still doesn't spoil what happened when your suddenly and out of the blue, together with a clock smuggling funeral possession, hit by it. David facing a dilemma in turning Bridie over to the police tries to smooth things out by turning her over to the police, or so he thought, being from the nation of Free Irland. It's when David suddenly realizes were he's at, the British controlled north of the country, that things really start to go wacko.More of a romantic comedy then anything else "I See a Dark Stranger" balances the dangers of wartime espionage and the ups and downs of a wartime romance, together with a heavy dose of slapstick comedy added in, masterfully. The ending is a real gem in not only with both David & Bridie tying the knot but the place, on David's part, where their to spend their honeymoon having such a negative impact on Bridie. If David had read a book on Irish History he would have known better then to choose the hotel where he and Bridie, who knew her history of Irland well, were to stay at!