Review – They Met in the Dark

This picture aspires to be both a spy movie and a romantic comedy, though it ends up doing an effective job as neither of the two. The story begins with the court-martial of a Navy officer (James Mason, who sports a dude-shave-it-off beard that fortunately does disappear after the first few minutes). After he’s convicted of spying for the Nazis, he sets out to prove his innocence and uncover the real culprits. His search somehow keeps bringing him into contact with a young woman (Joyce Howard) who’s initially convinced that he’s a murderer, though the absence of a body makes it hard to interest the police in investigating the crime. He keeps winning her over only to have circumstances renew her doubts about him, an annoying “comedy of errors” element that gets repeated many times after it has lost all entertainment value. Toward the end we get some cool code-breaking stuff, but for the most part this is too fluffy and dumb to work as a spy picture and too spy-intensive to work as a romance. Mildly amusing