O Espião Submarino

A deceptively and beautifully simple little film, a great start for the Powell and Pressburger collaboration, and good British propaganda fun too. Much too simple for most people today who would miss colour, violence, depravity, unfathomable plot and shaky camera work in their spy films.

Austere devilishly handsome German U Boat captain Conrad Veidt has convoluted spying mission in 1917 Scotland to locate the British fleet but finds himself being sidetracked with schoolmistress contact Valerie Hobson and the availability of butter. But even though WW1 is portrayed as more "civilised" than the coming war as in Colonel Blimp, oil and water must always remain just so. There's a fine cast of British stalwarts for example the seemingly legless Hay Petrie, some eccentric most with secrets, and high production values generally disguising occasionally flimsy sets and occasional implausibility. Rosza's music was high class too, nicely complementing the nitrate black and white film stock, which unfortunately has been allowed to deteriorate over the years but sometimes unintentionally lets you believe it really is 1917 and not 1939. As with Colonel Blimp 4 years later the German viewpoint with a sympathetic lead is told with a seeming impartiality, but after all there wasn't any doubt about the outcome. Even Chamberlain might've been hard to appease if Veidt's plans had been shown to bear fruit!

Throwaway - so why can't I throw it away? Entertaining, engrossing, amusing, nothing very heavy and even on the verge of war not a big flag-waver, so it's just the type of film I enjoy.

Just wanted to second the other user's comment.

I saw this last night as part of a Michael Powell/Emeric Pressberger retrospective underway at the American Cinemetheque. There are some unlikely aspects to the plot, but on the whole this is well crafted WWI thriller with a remarkable level of moral complexity, especially given that it was made and released just as England was entering a second war against Germany.

The protagonist (hero?) (played by the extraordinary Conrad Veidt) is a German officer on a spy mission and he is, in many respects, a quite admirable character. For the first half of the film, it's almost entirely from his point of view. It's hard to imagine Hollywood filmmakers EVER having the confidence that Powell and Pressberger clearly had in the intelligence of their audience, allowing them to actually like and admire an enemy agent.

While "The Spy in Black" eventually does come down squarely on the side of the English, the agents of the Kaiser come off only as perhaps a hair more ruthless than those fighting for king and country.

Of course, the Germany that England would be fighting within a few a few months would be far, far worse. This film is a potent reminder that while World War II might have a morally clear "good" war because of the vast evil of the Nazis, World War I was a horse of a far grayer color.

With sophisticated, occasionally black humor, this is a neat bit of old-fashioned movie entertainment with some genuinely intriguing differences. Enthusaistically recommended.

During the World War, a German U-boat comes up on the coast of Scotland. At this point Captain Hardt leaves the vessel and travels to a small village to meet his contact. He plans to use the treacherous assistance of bitter Royal Navy Lieutenant Ashington to guide the Germans to the spot of the British fleet. However not all is fair in love and war and Hardt soon finds his operation at risk of compromise.

Of course, much more famous for The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death, this film from Powell and Pressburger should not be over looked. While it is of course propaganda (released as it was in 1939), it is not a flag waving, lets all kill the Nazi's under the bed style film. Instead it stands up in it's own right as an exciting little thriller that makes some good points about the nature of war. The plot is quite straightforward at first but has a few nice twists that I won't spoil, and is generally enjoyable.

The strength of the film for me was the focus on a German Officer and not having him as a stereotypical evil tyrant. While the film doesn't let us wonder who the good guys and the bad guys are, it does at least allow Hardt to be more of a full person and the film better as a result. The ironies of the final action of the film is clear and is even more of a striking comment on war when you look at the `blue on blue' stats for Gulf War 2. Veidt does well in the lead as Hardt and is partly responsible for keeping him a bad guy without over egging the cake. Shaw and Hobson are good but perhaps a little too much of the `Heroic Brits' about them.

Overall this is a good wartime thriller but the unusual tack that it comes at, plus a darker and slightly subversive tone about it helps it stand out, if not from the rest of P&P's work, then certainly from the vast majority of wartime propaganda thrillers made in Britain around the second world war.

One of the great ironies of World War I was that Kaiser Wilhelm who built this great battle fleet to rival the British Navy never got to put it to real good use. Other than the inconclusive Battle Of Jutland the surface fleet sat out the war primarily. It was those U-Boats that in this war and the next were the primary weapon of the German Navy.

Which brings us to this film. A plan calling for a U-Boat or two is drafted by the German Naval Command in which U-Boat Captain Conrad Veidt is to make his way to Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands where the British fleet is anchored. Veidt puts ashore where he makes contact with a pair of British traitors, a cashiered captain Sebastian Shaw and a newly assigned schoolteacher in the region Valerie Hobson. When the fleet sails she will give Veidt instructions how to avoid the mine fields come in and do a Pearl Harbor on the fleet.

Veidt is a most honorable sort, he wears a coat over his naval uniform as he does not wish to be shot as a spy. Of course when cornered he does ditch the uniform for another garb, the better to continue his activities as The Spy In Black.

All however is not as it seems and history tells us such an event did not happen in World War I.

Veidt, Hobson, and Shaw really care this film with their performances. Down in the cast one that stands out is Cyril Raymond as a nosy country parson who gets too curious for his own good.

This film is a rarity in that Germans are not shown as intrinsically evil. That would change on both sides of the pond shortly.

An unusual spy thriller in that the main characters are all German spies or collaborators. THE SPY IN BLACK is set in Orkney in 1917, where a German U-boat captain has been sent to infiltrate the locals in respect of a planned attack. He soon develops a relationship with a school teacher who's also working for the Germans, and the stage is set for the forthcoming assault on the British fleet nearby.

THE SPY IN BLACK offers far more than your usual war-time thriller, and it has a very interesting plot to boot. Michael Powell handles the direction superbly, crafting a fine-looking and atmospheric little thriller on what is obviously a low budget, and the small scale somehow adds to the effect. There are plenty of twists and turns in the short running time, many of which you won't see coming, alongside a ton of drama and incident.

Headlining the cast is German actor Conrad Veidt, still packing a strong presence some 20 years after his role in THE CABINET OF DR CALIGARI. The supporting performers are equally effective, especially Sebastian Shaw as the turned British officer Ashington and Valerie Hobson as the spy-turned-schoolmistress. Altogether this is a highly effective thriller and one of the best of the decade.