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Reader question: Please explain “cloak and dagger”, as in “a cloak and dagger film set in the 1920s”. My comments: Literally, a cloak and dagger film features characters wearing a cloak (a large outer garment, best if large enough to cover the wearer from head to toe) and wielding a dagger, a stabbing knife with a pointed blade. The cloak hiding the wearer’s identity suggests secrecy, shadiness, mystery, conspiracy and so on. The dagger used as a stabbing weapon, of course, suggests murder, and, hence, blood, horror, feud and the like. Put together, “cloak and dagger” indicate a plot of heroic and/or horrific drama full of breathtaking, daring and pulsating twists and turns. All Zorro movies, for example, belong to the cloak and dagger category. One that I watched as a kid is a French production, with Alain Delon playing the Spanish Robin Hood legend. In this movie, Zorro actually does wear a cloak (or rather a cape) and wield a dagger (or to be precise a sword). All Sherlock Holmes movies are cloak and dagger as well. Holmes, the detective, doesn’t wear a cloak but many of the murder mysteries he has to solve involve victims who are stabbed to death by a dagger or knife. If you’re not one to nitpick, then all Alfred Hitchcock films, too, are cloak and dagger in nature because of all the horrors and mysteries, or conspiracies involved. | 
