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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.

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.

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.

This is an entertaining, well-made spy adventure set during World War I. Although made 60 years ago, the film has a sophisticated approach to the relationship between its three main characters. In particular, the natural attraction between the parts played by Conrad Veidt and Valerie Hobson is portrayed believably. Many of the supporting characters are also interesting; look out for Hay Petrie as the Scottish engineer aboard a ferry and an early appearance by Bernard Miles as a hotel desk clerk. Unlike the majority of British movies of this period, the film doesn't stereotype or make fun of its working-class characters.

The story has several good twists and an ironic climax. There are also some improbable coincidences, but no more than the typical James Bond movie.

Unlike Bond, however, "The Spy in Black" adopts a quite dark tone in its final 20 minutes. There is an almost tragic dignity and regret in the final scenes.

Director Michael Powell composes some interestingly-framed shots that make good use of Vincent Korda's sets. One of his favourite devices is to set a key character in sharp focus in the background while lesser parts stand or move slightly out-of-focus in the foreground. The effect is often quite striking.

This film marks Powell's first collaboration with the Hungarian writer Emeric Pressburger. The maturity of the romance between the leads and the snappiness of the dialogue are probably attributable to Pressburger's European upbringing.

Despite its age, "The Spy in Black" is well worth seeing just for the simple pleasures of a well-made entertainment executed with a little more care and imagination than usual.

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.

I first saw this movie on Derby Day 1939 at the then Capitol Cinema in Epsom Surrey UK when I had intended to watch the world famous horse race to be run that day on the nearby Epsom Downs. However, the weather was so wet and windy that I decided to go to a cinema instead. Having just watched the film on television I find that it thrilled me just as much as an octogenarian as it did when I was a teenager in 1939. In my view this is one of the finest of the 1930s British films. The fine quality of the direction and the talent of the principal actors and supporting cast make this a memorable piece of fiction which accurately reflects the narrow attitudes to manners that prevailed in remote parts of Scotland during the time of the first world war.

This is a World War I story of a German effort to defeat Britain's most powerful warships . 1917 , a German submarine captain (Conrad Veidt) returns from duty at sea during WWI and is assigned to infiltrate one of the Orkney Islands and obtain confidential British information . Then the undercover captain finds more than he bargained for in his contact , the local schoolmistress (Valerie Hobson) . Meanwhile , a submarine sets out to locate and sink the powerful Brit battleships during WWI in this most stirring account of the quest for the destruction of a English fleet located at an island.

Stars a great main cast helped by a fleet of the best Brit character players , all of them giving stunning acting . It's one of the first and important Brit pictures about warfare naval action and being based on real incidents . Known in the U. S. as ¨U-Boat 29¨, this movie is based on a J. Storer Couston novel . Well written by Storer Clouston (story) , script by Roland Pertwee and Emeric Pressburger , the latter developed a long teeming with director Michael Powell . This is a splendid British film concerning historic deeds during WWI , the naval battle in the Atlantic Ocean between German submarines and British battleships , dealing with a German submarine is sent to the Orkney Isles in 1917 to sink the British fleet . This picture is based on fact , but there have been complaints that is most inaccurate . Magnificent performances from Conrad Veidt as the German U-Boat captain is sent on a spying mission to the North of Scotland along with the attractive as well as adequate Valerie Hobson . The main and secondary cast are stunningly incarnated by a magnificent plethora of English actors , such as : Sebastian Shaw , Marius Goring , June Duprez , Helen Haye , Mary Morris , and brief uncredited appearances from Jack Lambert , Howard Marion-Crawford , Bernard Miles , Graham Stark , Torin Thatcher ; subsequently , some of them developing notorious Hollywood/British careers .

Lavishly financed by prestigious producer Alexander Korda and Irving Asher . Adding excellent scale models , though also used actual battle footage mixing with the miniatures , being well photographed in order to easier verisimilitude by forcing the perspective of the image to make the miniatures appear bigger and further apart. The producers knew that the use of scale models and explosions would have to look very realistic to be successful , as they hired expert FX technicians who were generally considered to be the best Brit team in the industry . The film contains an evocative and atmospheric cinematography in black and white by cinematographer Bernard Browne . As well as thrilling and emotive musical score by Miklós Rózsa to be continued a long and successful Hollywood career . The flick was stunningly directed by Michael Powell . This was the first film to pair Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger followed with Contraband in 1940 and going on to become an essential partnership in British film history . Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger created their production company : The Archers . They were usual collaborators , getting together to make a lot of films . Directing the following ones : The Tales of Hoffman, The Elusive Pimpernel, Pursuit of Graf Spee , The small black room, Black Narcisus , Contraband , The Thief of Bagdad , Edge of the World , Night ambush, The Lion has Wings , Spy in Black, One of out aircraft is missing , Life and death of Colonel Blimp, Canterbury Tale, among others . Many of them are deemed to be masterpieces , and being produced under banner their production The Archers . The picture will appeal to wartime genre buffs and British classic movie fans . Rating : 7/10. Better than average .

Noteworthy as the first collaboration between the celebrated British - Hungarian film-makers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, although this film is set at the time of World War 1, it was made in 1938 and released just weeks before the outbreak of the Second World Wars so that it isn't difficult to imagine P & P anticipating coming events in this production.

Compressed into just eighty-odd minutes it fairly rattles along as we follow the fortunes of a German U-Boat commander who is given a special solo mission to meet a fellow German agent on the remote island of Orkney, off the north tip of Scotland with the ultimate purpose of intercepting and sinking a significant number of British ships at Scapa Flow. His fellow-spy is a young, attractive woman, who has assumed the guise of a new school teacher who has been kidnapped and thrown into the sea en route by a pair of German female agents.

Their deadly plan relies on the inside knowledge provided to them by a renegade British navy officer but when the original teacher's fiancé, a gung-ho vicar, intervenes, not to mention another elderly couple who befriended the substituted girl before she was taken, this puts the cat amongst the pigeons, requiring a quick change of plans by the scheming pair. There's a big reveal of double-double agents which transforms the narrative before it all ends up in a tense and deadly face-off between the German sub and a small boat commandeered by the Germans with the British Navy also on hand.

With more twists and turns than a slalom ski-slope, it pays to pay attention to the fast-moving action. Conrad Veidt as the U-Boat captain isn't portrayed as a stereotypically cruel German protagonist but as one who has emotions which we see in his attraction to his contact, played by the plummy-voiced Valerie Hobson, later to be Mrs John Profumo of Scandal infamy, as well as in his final act at the end of the film.

While P & P were better known for their fantasy films under their Archers moniker some years later, here they knock out a very efficient and satisfying wartime thriller. Powell gives up hints of his coming directorial flair in a number of imaginative camera shots but here he mainly demonstrates his ability to tell a story and convey character.

All in all, a bright beginning for a partnership which would go on to make some of the best movies in the whole medium.

This British film is set during WWI...WWII wouldn't begin for another few months after the film's domestic debut in March, 1939. But I am sure it played well during WWII--both because it's darned entertaining and also because the Germans are the baddies in this one.

The film begins with a school teacher being abducted by two German agents. Then, a German submarine commander (Conrad Veidt) is sent on a mission to Britain that has everything to do with that school teacher. The woman was being sent to work in Scotland...very near to the British Navy base. So the faux teacher's job is to assist the submarine commander in his mission when he sneaks ashore. How does it all work out? Well, suffice to say exceptionally well...but I won't say more about that.

The movie has lots of good things about it. Conrad Veidt was an exceptionally good actor and here he really was at his best. The film also looked great--with an exceptional use of matte paintings, great looking sets and real ships! Additionally, while I hate the use of stock footage, here it's really not bad at all. Nothing to dislike about this tense film.

Mostly notable as the first time that Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger worked together, this time with Pressburger only as writer, not as codirector, The Spy in Black exists in this interesting pocket of film history. Made in 1938, less than a year before war broke out between Britain and Germany, a British film came out centered around a German U-boat captain in WWI that made him a rounded, almost sympathetic character, even as he plots to sink dozens of British warships. It's a mostly successful film that's really got dueling narrative directions, but we'll get to that.

U-boat captain Hardt (Conrad Veidt) is ordered on a secret mission to the Orkney Islands where he will meet a female German spy for a mission he won't know until he meets her. Meanwhile, we watch as a young English schoolteacher, Anne (June Duprez), engaged to the traveling Reverend Harris (Cyril Raymond) leaves for the Orkney Islands before she's drugged and replaced by German spies. On the island arrives Ms. Tiel (Valerie Hobson), having taking on the identity of Anne, and eschewing all efforts to get her to stay in the small and populated town center in favor of living in the remote schoolhouse.

The early parts of the film demonstrate the conflict within the heart of the film itself. Hardt's scenes are about how the war stripped humanity of many of its joys, in particular around food. He shows up to a hotel in a German port city, expects at least butter, gets nothing but carrots, and has to go right back out to perform his new mission. On the other hand, Tiel's scenes are about the mechanics of spycraft, somewhere between careful attention to the minutiae of the reality and an overly attentive to detail series of scenes that don't quite add the kind of tension one expects. It's not that Tiel's scenes are bad, just that they don't quite have the kind of suspenseful tension around them that they probably should. Part of this might be information kept from the audience until late in the film.

Anyway, Hardt meets with Tiel who tells him the plan. There is a disgraced English commander, now Lieutenant Ashington (Sebastian Shaw), who is angry with the Admiralty for removing his command that he's willing to give the German navy intelligence on a convoy leaving the Orkneys in order to sink it in exchange for payment. This is where a certain love triangle develops that makes the film feel like it's going to go in a particular direction, something rather mundane but potentially workable: two men falling in love with the same woman. It's here were Ford's later They Were Expendable comes to mind, about the impermanence of war and the fleeting nature of relationships made under its shadow, potentially walking towards some kind of tragic end.

But the film has something else in mind, a complete overturning of everything leading into the final act that deepens everything. It takes the idea of the impermanence of relationships under war and expands on it to include feelings of betrayal, dereliction of duty, and failure. It's a presentation of how human connection is both possible and impossible across national borders in wartime. It's a touch of Joyeaux Noel and The Dawn Patrol where there will always be other bonds that connect people crisscross national concerns but also conflict with them at the same time. It's where the efforts at actually building Hardt and Tiel as characters through the earlier parts of the film pays off.

As Hardt stands alone on that trawler's perch, having been defeated so thoroughly that he can't even move from a sinking vessel, it has this touch of tragedy, even though he's a German character, a spy working to sink British vessels, in a British film. It's not that Powell and Pressburger hated England. It seems obvious enough at this point that Powell loved his country deeply. However, he and Pressburger also seem to be humanists at heart, perhaps even utopians, who wished for human connection even in trying times of world-upheaval, a fact that helps their films have a long shelf life long after the direct conflicts are over. However, the films don't seem to be utopian themselves. They recognize that the world is big and violent without promises that all violence will end if we could just learn to get along. Instead, it strikes this balance where the focus is on individuals looking for ways through messy times, their conflicts of interest, and their basic desires.

The shadow of war was looming over Europe at the time, so making this on the eve of Hitler's invasion of Poland feels like a statement that even though countries may go to war, the people can still find common ground, and when they can't it's a tragedy of the individuals.

That's some waxing poetic about a movie I think is pretty good, but the final twenty minutes made it for me. Up until then, it was fine, a perfectly acceptable, if a bit overly complicated, spy adventure. And then it gained this extra dimension, deepening Hardt in a wonderful new direction, and giving us a tragic ending that surprised me. Helped in no small part by a strong cast, especially Veidt, The Spy in Black is overall a solid spy adventure that ends so much better than it begins.

....if you want to blend in with the locals in an isolated community. After all, they will never suspect your heavy German accent! Conrad Veidt (Hardt) is the spy in black who has a mission to contact a collaborating schoolteacher on a Scottish island in order to sink a British naval fleet stationed there. The film does have an interesting setting and it is ok to watch but starts to drag a little towards the end. We also get cheap sets that take away any real tension during the climax, eg, the scene where Veidt is signalling from a ship to his German submarine not to fire as he is on the ship. It just looks like he is waving in a studio set with no-one else around him and it destroys any realism.

The beginning of the film is more interesting than the 2nd half as we have the film's set-up nicely played out with schoolteacher June Duprez (Anne) being given a lift by elderly Helen Haye (Mrs Sedley) and her suspicious looking chauffeur Mary Morris. Woah! Didn't expect that! You are immediately hooked into the story and Valerie Hobson takes over as the schoolteacher. It's a spy story so you can expect duplicity and tricks, however, there comes a point where the film just seems to keep on going and gets tiresome. A good beginning and an ok film to watch once.

This excellent birth of "The Archers" just managed its London premiere the very week WWII was declared in Britain and all places of entertainment were ordered to close,albeit temporarily. Second of all Veidt was and is my favourite actor,having seen all but some rare silents from "Caligari" onwards. He was the definitive popular German swine(Eric Von,notwithstanding)although he did play many other parts - Jew Suss/Under The Red Robe,a mediaeval swashbuckler, the mysterious stranger in "Passing of the 3rd Floor,Back" or the aviator in "FP1"(English version). Shortly after fleeing the Nazis (whom he loathed) in the 30s he gladly set up a home near Korda's famous Denham studios and was a doting father to his daughter while soon becoming the tall and cultured idol of thousands of women.

He was also a Korda favourite and this first pairing with then one of Britain's favourite glamour girls.Valerie Hobson, following her brief success with Universal,he was rushed into another naval adventure,"Contraband" equally entertaining. Like,say, Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes", this is great escapist stuff with a mystery character at the centre of the story. But one point in the movie has always bothered me - just how does one manhandle a motor cycle up the steep conning tower of a submarine? We are never shown how Veidt managed it!

By the same token, how did Erik in "Phantom of the Opera" manage to get his organ/piano into his hideout amongst the Paris sewers? After all, we see the problem he had with the small boat! Curiously, Veidt's Nazi officer in "Escape" & "Casablanca" both died in the middle of a phone call while attempting the prevent an escape.

"Spy" has its share of amusing lines & allusions. On his entry at the start he & fellow submariner get seated at a crowded fashionable hotel anticipating a slap-up meal after a long period at sea only to be told almost every dish is "off" - even for naval officers. They leave in disgust & still starved. A while later when Hardt has been secretly landed on the Orkneys with motorcycle,late at night & having avoided discovery.he meets his contact V Hobson (a British agent posing as a local teacher)at home. Entering the kitchen he stops short & stares hard,alarming her and utters the word "boota!" in some disbelief which she interprets as "no,"butter!".and as he proceeds to dig with relish into a side of ham he remarks "These English - they are so long without their food!" The time was WW1 and an ironic comment on the German shortages - but the film's settings were equally appropriate to forthcoming WW2 conditions in Britain. During the film's production all the menacing signs of 1938/1939 were there but it seemed only Churchill was convinced of the inevitable when everyone wanted to believe Chamberlain. The film's scheduled release to London's Odeon cinema did not anticipate the decisive act of Germany's invasion of Poland.

Sadly, there was a real-life similarity in both Veidt's & Bing Crosby's sudden collapse just following a game of golf. Veidt had barely turned 50 as a Warner's star and still had lots to offer.

It's 1917. German submariners read in the newspaper that England is being starved by open submarine warfare but they are the ones running out of supply on a meatless day. Captain Hardt and his men are sent back into the seas. Their mission is to sink the British fleet near Scapa Flow in the Orkney Isles. His local contact is Tiel who has taken over the identity of newly arriving school teacher Miss Anne Burnett after they captured her. They are joined by disgraced British Naval officer Commander Ashington.

It's an interesting war movie released right before Britain enters WWII. It reminds the Brits of an earlier war and the Germans' willingness to do anything to win. I was going to complain about the Germans not killing their prisoners but that makes more sense with Tiel's reveal. It's a fine twist if somewhat out of nowhere. Also, it seems more 1939 than 1917. It's a fine espionage yarn and it has a bit of action in the end.

In 1917, during the World War I, Captain Ernst Hardt (Conrad Veidt) is assigned to travel to the Orkney Island to meet his contact, Fraulein Thiel (Valerie Hobson), to receive orders. Meanwhile, the new schoolteacher Anne Burnett (June Duprez) is intercepted by German spies and thrown off cliffs to look like an accident. Thiel poses of Anne Burnett and tells Capt. Hardt that the German submarine fleet should attack and destroy the British Fleet with the support of the rogue British Officer Ashington (Sebastian Shaw), who lost his position of Commander due to drink problem and is attracted by Thiel, who is his lover. Out of the blue, Burnett's fiancé Rev. John Harris (Cyril Raymond) arrives at her home to visit her but is subdued by the spies and made prisoner. Thiel keeps Capt. Hardt locked in his room during the night for her protection, and he tells his fellow officers in the submarine the plan to destroy the British Fleet. During the night, the lures Burnett and escapes from his room. He sees Burnett meeting Ashington and overhears their conversation, learning that the plan is indeed to destroy the German U-Boat fleet. Now he needs to contact his submarine to disclose the real plan, but the British soldiers are hunting him down.

"The Spy in Black" is a great 1939 (pre-WWII) movie of espionage. The plot is complex, with many twists and a cat-and-mouse game. The German plan is excellent, but the British plan is better and unexpected. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Not Available on DVD or Blu-Ray"

Released in the early years of WWII, this WWI espionage thriller is told from the perspective of the German naval officer who is smuggled onto a remote Scottish island to sabotage the fleet of British naval ships docked nearby. Surprisingly, it's only following a neat twist in the final act that director Michael Powell depicts the spy, who is portrayed with silky charm by Conrad Veidt, as the stereotypical evil Nazi that would flood cinema screens for generations to come.

This story U-boat commander Conrad Veidt plotting an attack on the British fleet during WWI is well-paced and dramatically photographed. Best-remembered as the first collaboration between director Michael Powell and screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, this has the style and substance of material that master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock would have been attracted to. There is a tragic quality to the final moments as Veidt realizes he is doomed, and this is led even greater poignancy by the knowledge that three weeks after this film was released, Great Britain would once again be at war with Germany. War is all hell.

Interesting in that it has a German lead, played by a German actor, who you actually sympathise with. Very much not a jingoistic war film, and not what you would expect. Veidt stands out in this as a an actor, his experience really shines through and he comes across as a more realistic, where some of the British actor comes across as 2D. Nice character study of a professional officer who sticks by his code, despite the circumstances. Atmospheric and well made, solid British war spy flick.

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.

This film was the first collaboration between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. In this case, Michael Powell was the director, at which he did a superb job, and Pressburger wrote the screenplay, based upon a story by J. Storer Clouston. Four of Clouston's novels were filmed (one twice) between 1917 and 1939, this being the last. The other which tends to be known by cinéastes gave the story to Marcel Carné's farce set in Victorian London, DROLE DE DRAME (1937). This film, set in the First World War, is notable for the first credited appearance in a feature film of Marius Goring, who the following year would be so brilliant in the mystery film THE CASE OF THE FRIGHTENED LADY (1940, see my review), and go on to a splendid career. Here he plays Lieutenant Schuster, second in command of the German submarine U-29. The captain of that submarine is played by one of my favourite actors of the period, Conrad Veidt, whose early death only four years later at the age of only 50 was a great loss to the cinema, despite the fact that by that time he had already made 118 films (maybe that's what killed him!) Veidt is as usual noted for his gravitas and presence, and does an excellent job, despite there not being any character development or any scenes offering any particular acting challenge. The female lead is Valerie Hobson, who instead of being her usual beautiful and romantic self, here has to play an icy German agent. But in fact she is really a double agent, i.e. a British agent posing as a German agent. When she is being a British agent she is very nice, but when she is being a German agent, she is horrid. And of course that is very appropriate. This film was produced just before the Second World War began, and was a useful 'shot across the bow' of the complacent Chamberlain faction, reminding the public of the dangers of the Hun. In fact we see lots of real shots across the bow in this film because it involves naval espionage and naval actions. A considerable amount of real footage of the British fleet is incorporated in the film, showing many ships which must have been sunk within two or three years of the filming. We see battleships firing their guns, depths charges being fired by destroyers, ships travelling in convoy, and military historians can only react with glee at all these glimpses of the British Navy as it was just before hostilities with Germany recommenced. For the modern DVD, the film has been perfectly and lovingly remastered and restored by the British Film Institute's restoration team, those insufficiently appreciated heroes of the cinema, who by their expertise have preserved so much that is precious of our cinematic heritage, which would otherwise have been lost. (For one of their greatest triumphs, see the amazing silent film, UNDERGROUND, of 1928, and my review of it.) As for the story of this film, it is rather complicated and a gripping yarn. Helen Haye (who so dominated THE CASE OF THE FRIGHTENED LADY mentioned above) appears here as an arrogant and domineering German spy masquerading as an English aristocrat in a Rolls Royce, who throws a charming young girl off a cliff and into the sea without a qualm because she wishes to steal her identity for another German agent. The film is set in the Orkney Islands (good location footage there), and the German agent is meant to impersonate the new schoolmistress at Long Hope in order to spy upon the British Fleet at anchor in Scapa Flow. Veidt arrives by submarine to link up with her at her schoolhouse. One extraordinary feature of the story is that he brings a motorcycle with him in his submarine and lands it on the Orkneys in order to convince people that he must be a local, as how could anyone who was not a local and had arrived by submarine possibly have a motorcycle. What an amusing touch! It must be the first time in fiction or history that anyone ever transported his motorcycle underwater to an espionage rendezvous. (Or do US Navy Seals and British SAS do this all the time, one wonders. After all, a motorcycle could be useful in getting from one end of a submarine to anther quickly, couldn't it? I mean, if one wanted to countermand an order or just have a sandwich.) But the German agent who was meant to be the schoolmistress has herself been supplanted by Valerie Hobson, who just happens to speak perfect German. (She seems really to do this, so perhaps Valerie Hobson was actually a plant all along for her entire film career, secretly working for Hitler, which is why she married a British cabinet minister? That is a joke, folks, please do not sue.) Here Valerie Hobson is married to a British naval officer who pretends to be betraying his country but is not really doing so. The film is really very good indeed and also shows us what stuffed-shirts the local Scots were back then. I remember being stuck in Edinburgh on a Sunday long ago and being astonished to discover that all the cinemas and pubs were closed because it was 'the Lord's Day of Rest', and enjoying oneself was thought to be sinful. At the risk of being controversial, might I suggest that the true origins of the Taliban may lie deep within the recesses of the Scottish Kirk? And another thing, while I am on the subject of Scotland: they eat the most disgusting thing in the world, which is called 'white pudding'. I would rather eat a bowl of sheep's eyes any day than face another Scottish 'white pudding'. I won't try to describe it, but I leave its horrors to the imaginations of all fortunate enough never to have encountered one.