The Spy in Black (1939)

Cautiously Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Director: Michael Powell

Writers: Emeric Pressburger, J. Storer Clouston, Roland Pertwee

Cinematographer: Bernard Browne

Composer: Miklós Rózsa

Cast: Conrad Veidt, Valerie Hobson, Sebastian Shaw

This first Powell-Pressburger collaboration – a First World War set tale of intelligence and counter intelligence, in which a pair of German spies infiltrate a small Scottish island community, planning to organise an attack against a British naval fleet – proves to be a rather modest if reasonably entertaining affair; well-made, written, and acted, but generally unremarkable. Iain.Stott