They Met in the Dark

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".

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.

Another of the British Noirs from the Koch Lorber box. It takes place in England, with English characters: at least we have some coherence of plot and setting. What is the plot, exactly? Something to do with Nazi spies trying to strike at a warship; James Mason has vowed to stop them. I kept thinking of Hitchcock's 39 Steps; Mason and Joyce Howard sticking together the way Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll did--handcuffed--as they traipsed through Scotland. I don't think there's any value to labelling this movie a noir--it's a wartime thriller, pure and simple, and enjoyable for that reason. Where is the hard-bitten but honest detective, where the dangerous woman? no noir here.

The career that James Mason had before being discovered by Hollywood was quite prolific. Thanks to TCM, audiences have had the opportunity to see some of his British films. This one, "They Met in the Dark," is a 1943 noir, and has both elements of drama and humor. The film begins with a trial, after which, found guilty of treason, Richard Heritage (Mason) is stripped of rank and thrown out of the Navy. He sets out, with one of his crew who believes in him, to prove his innocence. He backtracks, repeating his actions from the day he was arrested.

He finds one woman (Patricia Medina) dead, another woman (Joyce Howard) positive that he had something to do with it, and a talent agent (Tom Walls) who has some interesting acts on his roster as well as a sophisticated singer (Phyllis Stanley).

Mason is handsome, elegant, and vital in the lead role. He handles the lighter moments very well and has lots of charm. It's easy to see why he eventually went to Hollywood. Stanley does some nice singing, and Ronald Chesney plays a great harmonica.

Different and enjoyable, with a good plot and British atmosphere that will keep the viewer interested.

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...