Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger first collaborated on this wartime melodrama.
The Spy in Black (1939) shows the future Archers' penchant for humanizing their villains, even amidst a familiar cloak-and-dagger tale.
In 1917, German U-Boat Captain Hardt (Conrad Veidt) embarks on a secret mission to destroy Britain's fleet at Scapa Flow. He meets with a German agent Frau Tiel (Valerie Hobson), masquerading as a schoolteacher, and a disenchanted Royal Navy Officer (Sebastian Shaw). Hardt forwards crucial information to the German Navy, but he soon realizes his mission's more complicated than it seems.
There's not much original in
The Spy in Black, loosely based on a J. Storer Clouston novel. Powell's narrative brims with expected tools of double (and trouble) agents and treachery, that stretch an already thin story to the breaking point (how does a submarine commander become a secret agent?). The film has some clever touches, like a school lesson underscored by artillery fire or the bitterly ironic finale, and there's some fun banter between Hardt and Tiel. The plot mechanics though rarely stray from the obvious.
Powell and Pressburger populate their potboiler with humanizing touches. Recently departed from blockaded Germany, Hardt salivates at the sight of butter. There's even a scene where he and Tiel enjoy a ham dinner with orgiastic pleasure. Hardt's such an honorable character, tough, resourceful but chivalrous, that we almost root for him. Tiel makes a snappy romantic foil and Powell provides colorful bit characters: the rough-hewn locals, the tough ferry captain (George Summers), a gormless priest (Athole Stewart) who stumbles into the plot.
The Spy in Black almost works better in the margins than its main storyline.
Conrad Veidt makes Hardt menacing yet likeable, an honorable antihero. It's easy to cheer even if he's nominally the enemy. Sebastian Shaw is a stiff counterpart; Valerie Hobson's smart, snappish makes a nice costar. Marius Goring, one of the Archers' favorites, plays Hardt's lieutenant; June Duprez has a miniscule part.
The Spy in Black provides an efficient spy caper. It's more interesting though as a precursor for Powell and Pressburger's later works: the respectable German enemies, the touches of local color, the emphasis on humanity, even in wartime. From those thematic interests came some of England's finest films:
49th Parallel,
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Canterbury Tale among them.
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