I Was a Spy

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.

Based on the memoir by wartime Belgian nurse Marthe Gnockhaert (1892-1966) - whose story resembles Edith Cavell's except she lived to tell the tale - and prefaced by a quote from former Secretary for War Winston S. Churchill. This lavish but bleak espionage drama set in Belgium in 1915 boasting fluid photography by imported Hollywood cameraman Charles Van Enger and handsome sets including a huge and imposing town square filled with parading Germans was voted the year's best film by the readers of 'Film Weekly'.

The cast includes later members of Hollywood's British community Edmund Gwenn and Nigel Bruce, with Conrad Veidt flashing his teeth ten years before his definitive Nazi swine Major Strasser in 'Casablanca'. The resistance interestingly includes a lot of women (including Martita Hunt in a rare non-eccentric role); while it doesn't spare us the spectacle of British planes strafing an outdoor prayer service and the development of poison gas ("How can chemists win the war?")

Why do those Germans keep doing it? They tried to invade Paris in 1870, they tried in 1914, and they succeeded in 1940. What is it about French food that drives the Krauts so crazy that they feel they have to invade Paris so often? Can't they just go as tourists and eat in the best restaurants without bringing all their tanks and jackboots with them? 'Dirty swine!', as Herbert Marshall says in this film about two British prisoners, but which we find more appropriate to direct towards the wurst-lovers themselves. Here the heroic Madeleine Carroll plays 'Laura', code name for a Belgian nurse spying for the Allies against the Hun. The character is a portrayal of the real life Marthe Cnockhaerdt (1892-1966), and follows the true story very closely (although her two years in prison is skipped over so that her incarceration appears to be but a matter of days). Herbert Marshall gives what could be described as an 'ardent' performance, as he attempts to persuade us that he is in love with Madeleine Carroll, which he clearly found impossible. It is not for nothing that she was known as 'the ice queen of the screen'. Marshall was not really suited to these romantic roles, and was always best when being detached and sardonic, at which he truly excelled. Conrad Veidt here plays a formal and implacable German officer and lacks all those warm and sympathetic qualities which suited him so much better, and which came to the fore in such as films as CONTRABAND (1940, see my review). Of course this film is set during World War One, so we do not have Nazis yet, but we do have spiked helmets (which it is said the German soldiers wore in order to protect their pointy heads). It is an interesting historical irony that Carroll here plays a dedicated war nurse, whereas in real life Carroll did indeed become a dedicated war nurse in the following world war. In the film, she also becomes a spy, but in real life she presumably did not. But then, where is the dividing line between fiction and reality? If the fictitious nurse can become a real nurse, then it only takes one small further step for her to start smuggling those little notes written on cigarette paper. So perhaps Carroll didn't smoke. It was educationally useful, I am sure, for the English public to see this film set in Belgium, and to observe the suffering of the Belgians under the ruthless German occupation, considering that only a few years later this would all be happening for real once again. The Belgians and the Germans have since made up, however, as the Fourth Reich has its headquarters these days in Brussels, and I have heard it said that the obliging Belgians keep hot sauerkraut permanently ready for any surprise visit by die Kaiserin, who with her pudding face needs continual feeding up. This is a very fine, sensible, but gently old-fashioned spy film directed by the highly capable Victor Saville, whose most famous film was probably Kipling's KIM (1950). The affable Edmund Gwenn is very good as the Burgomaster of the small Belgian town, and it is interesting to see the legendary Gerald du Maurier (father of Daphne) as the military hospital's doctor, and what I noticed particularly about him were his elegant hands. The film also has a good cameo for Nigel Bruce, later to become so well known as Dr. Watson in so many Sherlock Holmes films. Here he plays Scottie, a captured British soldier who is wounded but escapes. He had only been in films for three years, and is still sprightly even though he was already aged 38. It is always interesting to catch such early glimpses of people who later become prominent in other roles.

With about twenty million deaths, the first world war wasn't a laughing matter and since it only ended fifteen years before this film was made it's understandable why this takes itself so seriously. When this came out everyone watching it would have lost people very close to them in the war so there is a respectful sense of deference and dignity implicit throughout I WAS A SPY.

Whilst understandable, that respect for the awfulness of The War To End All Wars does mean that watching this is a rather humourless and sombre experience. On that same theme, Madeleine Carroll, our spy (based on a real life nurse) also keeps the smiles to a minimum and plays her role as a rather icy, remote person. That remoteness is however what makes her such a perfect spy. She is no blank page though - you can see that there's a lot going on in her mind however you just don't know what but - you want to know - that's the sign of a good actor. There is no question whatsoever when you yourself are watching this that you're looking at a real story with real people. Everyone's acting is simply so good and timeless that it's not like watching acting.

As you would expect from Gaumont-British which was our premier, big-budget motion picture studio back in the thirties, this is a very classy, high production value picture. The sets are impressive, the camerawork is imaginative, the script feels authentic and director Victor Saville builds that sense of tension and anxiety up so subtly that you don't realize that by the end you're literally sitting on the edge of your seat.

Since 1933 there have been countless similar films of this nature and a lot of them are obviously going to be better, this however still stands its ground and is still entertaining, interesting and satisfying.