THEY MET IN THE DARK (1943)

During WWII, commander Richard Heritage (James Mason) is discharged from the British navy for negligence of duty when a ship he was supposed to be protecting was destroyed by the Nazis. His defense is that Nazi spies stole his genuine orders and replaced them with fake ones, and he sets out to prove it. His first visit is to a manicurist named Mary who would have had the chance to pull the switch. A mind reader and hypnotist named the Great Riccardo is setting up a date with her, but she agrees to meet Richard later. He winds up tracking her down that night at a cottage on the outskirts of town where a young woman named Laura (Joyce Howard) has also arrived, ostensibly to visit her uncle. Laura finds Mary dead, clutching a piece of paper with the name of a theatrical agency on it—the same, as it happens, that the Great Riccardo is attached to. Laura and Richard meet in the dark, in passing as she's leaving and he’s arriving. The next day, when the police arrive, the dead girl has vanished. As Richard and Mary investigate separately, they wind up meeting up often and soon joining forces. What’s going on at the theatrical agency, and how is Riccardo involved?

Things get a bit complicated from here on, but this B-mystery never really gets confusing. Mason and Howard work well together—in the first couple of scenes, Mason wears a patently false beard that's supposed to be real but he shaves it off before too long. We know who the spies are from early on, so the suspense is in how Mason and Howard will expose them. At times, this has the spirit of a Hitchcock movie like THE 39 STEPS, particularly when it comes down to showing exactly how the spies get their information out to their fellow Nazi, a clever bit that I won't spoil. The supporting cast is fine, especially David Farrar (BLACK NARCISSUS) who, though seventh billed, has a big role in the outcome of the film. This tends to be damned with faint praise by critics, but I quite enjoyed it. Once again, I must note that this is misleadingly included in a boxed set of British noir films, and it is most certainly not noir. Pictured are Farrar and Mason. [DVD]