Conrad Veidt

Sebastian Shaw

Valerie Hobson

Marius Goring

June Duprez

Athole Stewart

Agnes Lauchlan

Helen Haye

Cyril Raymond

George Summers

Hay Petrie

Grant Sutherland

Robert Rendel

Mary Morris

Margaret Moffatt

Kenneth Warrington

Torin Thatcher

Esma Cannon

Cyril Chamberlain

Bryan Herbert

Skelton Knaggs

Howard Marion-Crawford

Bernard Miles

John Penrose

Johnnie Schofield

Diana Sinclair-Hall

Graham Stark

Jack Lambert

Jeanne Macintyre

Jack Sharp

Michael Powell

J. Storer Clouston

Emeric Pressburger

Roland Pertwee

Irving Asher

Hugh Stewart

Frederick Pusey

Bernard Browne

Miklós Rózsa

Patrick Jennings

Alexander Korda

A.W. Watkins

John W. Mitchell

Vincent Korda

William Hornbeck

Muir Mathieson

Thriller

The Spy in Black

Irving Asher Productions

London Films Productions

United Kingdom

Peter McGinn

This is a classic black and white spy thriller, thought of highly enough to be part of a national project to restore old films.

The movie is entertaining, with a couple of departures from normal thrillers, I think (though I am not a follower of the genre). The bulk of the story is told from the perspective of the Germans, the enemy, as it were. It would be like the movie The Alamo being told from the perspective of Santa Anna’s Mexican army. Also, the ending is unusual compared to a modern thriller, where then good guy and bad guy usually square off and settle things in a climactic final scene.

But they do produce a plot twist, the norm for any spy movie, and it works. It is a short movie, well under 90 minutes, and it moves right along. The lack of color adds to the atmosphere of the film. The script is fine. Oddly, several lines are delivered in German with no translation, but obviously nothing critical is left out because of it. You can sort of get what they must be saying and they are brief bits of dialogue. 

I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch this movie a second time, but I don’t regret the time spent watching it.

CinemaSerf

Valerie Hobson steals the show here in this dark, tense, wartime espionage drama about a German U-boat captain (Conrad Veidt) sent to the Orkney Islands in WWI to gather intelligence on the British Grand Fleet. Released at the start of the Second World War, this first outing for Powell/Pressberger delivers in a much more ominous tone than that of a mere piece of propaganda. There is a depth to the writing and a sinisterness to the story that is gripping for just shy of 90 minutes before culminating in the sort of "gallant" ending that I suspect would not have been considered appropriate five years later.

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The Spy in Black 1939 Trailer | Conrad Veidt | Valerie Hobson