Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were one of British cinema's most dynamic and influential collaborations between a writer and a director during the 1940s and 1950s. As film critic Steven Flores notes, their first movie working together, August 1939's "The Spy In Black," "marks the first collaboration between Powell and Pressburger that would help define British cinema."
Powell had been involved in film ever since the mid-1920s, working under film director and studio owner Rex Ingram, before assuming the director's chair in 1931. He specialized in making "quota quickies," low-budget affairs intended to expand the number of English-produced movies. By 1939 Powell was a contract director for independent producer Alexander Korda. Hungarian Emeric Pressburger worked for Germany's largest film studio, UFA, using his journalistic skills to write screenplays. He fled Germany in 1935, where he met fellow Hungarian Korda, owner of London Films, the largest movie studio in England at the time. He was asked by Korda to reshape the script of "The Spy In Black," adapted from the 1917 novel of the same name by Joseph Clouston since its original screenplay contained too much dialogue.
Powell distinctly remembers the first meeting he had with Pressburger. Korda introduced the two by saying, "I have asked Emeric to read the script, and he has things to say to us." Powell recalled he "listened spellbound to this small Hungarian wizard, as Emeric unfolded his notes, until they were at least six inches long. He had stood Clouston's plot on its head and completely restructured the film." The much improved script was ideally suited for Conrad Veidt, a former German actor, and Valeria Hobson, whose portfolio included 1935's "The Bride of Frankenstein" and "Werewolf of London."
Although set in 1917, "The Spy In Black," also known by the title "U-boat 29," was curious in its timing with World War Two less than a month away. There's a tinge of sympathy for the German U-Boat commander, Captain Hardt (Veidt), who is tired of the war but follows orders to contact a female spy on the Orkney Islands north of Scotland to map out the attack on the British Fleet at Scapa Flow. The spy, Fräulein Tiel (Hobson), poses as a schoolteacher, who's having an affair with a disgraced Royal Navy officer, Ashington (Sebastian Shaw), now working for the Germans. Hardt has fallen for Tiel, that is until he discovers both Tiel and Ashington are double agents working for the British and setting a trap for the attacking German U-boats.
"Pressburger went to great lengths to characterize Hardt as a German officer whose morals and code of conduct is vastly superior to the Nazi equivalents of 1939," says film reviewer Mark Hasan, "as evidence by his behavior when he commanders a vessel in the film's final reel."
The New York Times, reviewing the movie during its October 1939 American premier, labeled the first Powell/Pressburger film as "the most exciting spy melodrama since the advent of the Second World War. The British may not have the Bremen, but they still have Conrad Veidt." The National Board of Review called "The Spy in Black" one of the year's best movies.
Powell distinctly remembers the first meeting he had with Pressburger. Korda introduced the two by saying, "I have asked Emeric to read the script, and he has things to say to us." Powell recalled he "listened spellbound to this small Hungarian wizard, as Emeric unfolded his notes, until they were at least six inches long. He had stood Clouston's plot on its head and completely restructured the film." The much improved script was ideally suited for Conrad Veidt, a former German actor, and Valeria Hobson, whose portfolio included 1935's "The Bride of Frankenstein" and "Werewolf of London."
Although set in 1917, "The Spy In Black," also known by the title "U-boat 29," was curious in its timing with World War Two less than a month away. There's a tinge of sympathy for the German U-Boat commander, Captain Hardt (Veidt), who is tired of the war but follows orders to contact a female spy on the Orkney Islands north of Scotland to map out the attack on the British Fleet at Scapa Flow. The spy, Fräulein Tiel (Hobson), poses as a schoolteacher, who's having an affair with a disgraced Royal Navy officer, Ashington (Sebastian Shaw), now working for the Germans. Hardt has fallen for Tiel, that is until he discovers both Tiel and Ashington are double agents working for the British and setting a trap for the attacking German U-boats.
"Pressburger went to great lengths to characterize Hardt as a German officer whose morals and code of conduct is vastly superior to the Nazi equivalents of 1939," says film reviewer Mark Hasan, "as evidence by his behavior when he commanders a vessel in the film's final reel."
The New York Times, reviewing the movie during its October 1939 American premier, labeled the first Powell/Pressburger film as "the most exciting spy melodrama since the advent of the Second World War. The British may not have the Bremen, but they still have Conrad Veidt." The National Board of Review called "The Spy in Black" one of the year's best movies.