Rent The Spy in Black (1939)

Excellent - The Spy in Black review by sb

FILM & REVIEW Cracking Michael Powell film ( and his first collaboration with Emeric Pressburger) has Veidt as Captain Hart a WW1 U-boat commander tasked with a top secret mission. He gets dropped off in the Orkney’s where the British Fleet are anchored and contacts a German Spy (Hobson) masquerading as a school teacher. She puts him in touch with disgraced Naval Officer Shaw who betrays the sailing plans of the fleet in revenge. Hart communicates the plans to his submarine and the plan to sink the British navy is in place.. Except things are not what they seem…… Viedt is excellent as the proud German with a sense of honour ( he himself fled Nazi Germany a few years earlier as his wife was Jewish) and Hobson has the much more ambiguous role - (she would go on to marry John Perfumo) and the film has a more than ironic twist in its tail. As mentioned it’s the first of more than 20 films Powell and Pressburger made together among them some of the British films ever made - 4/5

Spy Thriller. - The Spy in Black review by Steve

Classy spy thriller set in the Orkneys during WWI, but released with UK on the precipice of another war. It would be a while until we again saw a good German on a British screen. Conrad Veidt plays a U-boat skipper sent to the Scottish isles to plan an attack on British warships, in cahoots with a phoney schoolmistress (Valerie Hobson).

This is espionage, so people are not always what they seem, but the captain is portrayed as a sensitive, educated and capable professional. The best part of the film is the developing relationship between the two stars as they plot in a remote, windswept schoolhouse. After the cast embarks for a shoot out at sea, it becomes less exciting, though there is a final ironic twist.

Veidt is an imposing presence, but the screen is dominated by the imperious, elegant Hobson. There are themes which were inescapable in the coming WWII films, such as the dangers of careless talk or trusting strangers. There is shadowy coastal photography and a tense orchestral score (by Miklós Rózsa), which bring the atmosphere.

The film is significant as the first collaboration between Michael Powell, and its co-scriptwriter Emeric Pressburger, which sparked a decade of some of the greatest films ever made. It's an improvement from Powell's earlier work; uneven, but intelligent and witty. The trace of Hitchcock doesn't obscure the duo's own unique signature.