Fri 27 May 2016
Mystery Movie Review: THEY MET IN THE DARK (1943).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[8] Comments
THEY MET IN THE DARK. General Films, UK, 1943. James Mason, Joyce Howard, Tom Walls, Phyllis Stanley, Edward Rigby, Ronald Ward, David Farrar, Karel Stepanek, Patricia Medina. Based on the novel The Vanished Corpse, by Anthony Gilbert (US title: She Vanished in the Dawn). Director: Carl Lamac.
A very minor wartime British spy film cum murder mystery that has only a couple of points worthy of notice, in my opinion. The first is that it is based on an Arthur Crook detective novel by Anthony Gilbert, Crook being a low-life London lawyer who had over 50 recorded adventures from the good lady’s pen (or typewriter, as the case may be).
There is no Mr. Crook in the movie, though, and even though I’m not sure where he would have fit in, I’d have liked to have seen who they might have picked to play him. It wouldn’t have been the utterly handsome but oh so brooding James Mason — the second reason for you to see this movie, should you ever have the opportunity.
In the film Mason plays a Royal Navy commander who is given his walking papers after allowing the Nazis to blow up a ship under his watch. Knowing he has been given faked orders, he tracks down a manicurist who may have switched them on him first to a bar then to an old deserted house which (of course) is not really deserted. From another direction comes Laura Verity (Joyce Howard) who expects to find her uncles living there but instead finds the manicurist’s dead body.
Which quickly enough disappears à la the title of Anthony Gilbert’s novel. She suspects the commander, and to clear her name from providing the police false information, she decides to solve the case. He, of course, wishes to clear his name from more serious charges and is constantly annoyed to find the girl’s path continually crossing and interfering with his.
Which means, of course, they soon find themselves falling in love, all the while eluding the Navy, a gang of Nazi spies, an oh-so-British police inspector, all against a backdrop of a music hall complete with many songs and a harmonica player who is… Well, I shouldn’t tell you, should I?
The story’s rather a sorry mess, but the two leading players make it fun. Minor league fun, but still fun. But if James Mason hadn’t been in it, it never would have turned up again years later, in of all things, a DVD boxed set of British noir films. But noir? Not on your life.
May 28th, 2016 at 2:07 am
Black and white, a mystery, and James Mason is in it, noir enough for some I guess.
I haven’t read this particular Crook novel so I have no idea how he fit into the plot, if the plot is the same as the book — no promise of that.
Frankly I never did get to be much of a Gilbert or Crook fan. I didn’t have much use for H.C. Bailey’s Joshua Clunk either. Slightly disreputable English solicitors seem to be a sub genre I never much got into.
That said Crook was around for quite a few years and well represented in American paperbacks so Gilbert’s fans saw something in him and her that I never quite did.
I notice David Farrar in this one. He was also Sexton Blake in a couple of films, eventually a fairly big star in some actual noir films like NIGHT WITHOUT END. Mason was Mick Corby in one film, so we have Sexton Blake and Mick Corby in the same film even if no Arthur Crook.
May 28th, 2016 at 6:11 am
Gilbert also did the novel basis of MY NAME IS JULIA ROSS.
May 28th, 2016 at 7:11 am
Dan
The novel was THE WOMAN IN RED and another Arthur Crook story. Unless he had a very small role, I don’t remember him in the movie.
May 28th, 2016 at 6:12 am
David
You and I are of the same opinion of both Arthur Crook and Joshua Clunk, tolerable in small doses, but sometimes that’s only a few chapters, not entire books.
The book this movie is based on has all but vanished itself. There is only one copy offered for sale on the Internet at this time, and that’s one that’s pictured. It’s a copy of a Collins White Circle paperback published in Canada in 1943.
Neither the US or UK edition shows up at all.
May 28th, 2016 at 4:27 pm
They wrote Ellery Queen out of TEN DAYS WONDER, Anthony Gethryn out of 23 PACES TO BAKER STREET (NURSEMAID WHO DISAPPEARED), Albert Campion out of TIGER IN THE SMOKE, Nigel Strangeways out of THIS MAN MUST DIE (THE BEAST MUST DIE), Michael Shayne out of KISS KISS BANG BANG, Mr. Mycroft out of THE DEADLY BEES, and Mr. Moto out of STOPOVER TOKYO so I guess Crook is in good company.
Frankly I wouldn’t much miss him. As I said, Crook and Gilbert were a pair I never cared much for, though I will grant some of the underlying plots were good, as these movies attest to.
Fairly or not Gilbert’s novels always had a claustrophobic feel to them for me like one of those little old lady rooms full of damask, doilies, and musty lace where no air has penetrated for ages and it is always too close and too hot, with Crook an uncomfortable incongruous figure forced into them.
May 28th, 2016 at 8:55 pm
If I were younger with time to spare, I’d use your comment, David, to make a complete list of all the novels with series characters with the latter dropped with the movie was made. I’m sure there must be more, but this is an awfully good start.
May 28th, 2016 at 8:56 pm
PS. Your last paragraph sums up my feelings for the works of Anthony Gilbert to a T.
May 29th, 2016 at 1:15 am
Re series characters, add Charlie Chan, who is in HOUSE WITHOUT A KEY, but just barely, so you would never know he is the main character.