I Was a Spy

Madeleine Carroll plays Martha Cnockhaert, a Belgian nurse who spied for the British during the First World War.

The movie is based on Miss Cnockhaert's memoirs of the same title .... ghost-written by her husband, John 'Jock' McKenna. It's a highly romantic view of the trade, with Herbert Marshall as her lover and fellow spy, Edmund Gwenn as the town's mayor, and Conrad Veidt giving a very creepy performance as the commander of the German occupying forces. Miss Carroll gives a fine, layered performance, and while it is clear this was a major production for Gaumont British, with a large cast of extras, director Victor Saville focuses the camera on her. She's worth it.

There was a spate of women-spies-of-the-Great-War movies about this time from Hollywood. The best remembered one is probably MATA HARI, starring Greta Garbo. Hollywood offered a sexy, Pre-Code vision of espionage. This movie offers a less baroque, more intimate view.

Biopic about a young Belgian nurse who turns spy against the occupying German force in WWI . Madeleine Carroll stars and has some moving moments, particularly towards the end of the film. The Germans are represented by domineering commandant Conrad Veidt and compassionate doctor Gerald Du Maurier whilst the Belgians are represented by kindly Edmund Gwenn as the Burgomaster and Martita Hunt as the lead character's aunt. Nigel Bruce is 10th billed and has two fleeting appearances early on as a convalescing Scotsman 'imaginatively' named Scottie.

I Was A Spy is one of the better pictures to emerge from the early days of British talkies. It certainly stands up well against its American competition, which sad to say, many other British pictures of this period don't. The cast is uniformly good, and Madeleine Carroll is lovely as always. Perhaps the only reservations I have in this area is the way in which Herbert Marshall can deliver his lines a bit mechanically at times. Victor Saville's direction is nicely understated, yet the film can be quite exciting at times. There are two memorable scenes - the church parade, and the quietly effective closing moments of the film. Well worth seeing.

There is a problem with this movie: a Flemish nurse gives indications to the British warplanes to bombard German troops being in the open field and then there after she is nursing the soldiers that she was betraying. Martha Knockaert was not a Mata Hari but she was dangerous and by her behavior she killed a lot of people. Her trial by the Germans military is correct as it was by that time in the West Flanders in 1916. The movie shows us the German troops at the market place in full exercise which gives the movie a moment of real authenticity. Also the "café" scenes with the German officers are real. Roeselare was at that time a backward city with a rural population but now it is the nerve of a commercial region. It is the only movie ever made about this town.

This was a big budget effort from Gaumont British.Madeleine Carroll was the highest paid British star of the era,and gives a very effective performance.She,Marshall and Veidt would all be in Hollywood by the end of the decade.