THE SPY IN BLACK

This 1939 film is the first collaboration between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, so I was quite prepared for it to be a bit odd, but I didn't expect the first half of it to be quite as disorientating as it was.

The year is 1917, and the two main characters are a German U-boat commander, Hardt (played by Conrad Veidt) and Fräulein Tiel (Valerie Hobson), his contact in an espionage plot to destroy a significant proportion of the British Fleet at Scapa Flow.

She is pretending to be a schoolteacher,  Miss Burnett, on the Orkney Islands, and her home forms a base for a few days for her and Hardt, plus a disillusioned Royal Navy officer, Ashington, who is prepared to betray his country.

As I was watching this I was thinking, wow, am I really supposed to be rooting for them to succeed?  Surely not, especially since there is a sinister bit of business early on where German agents drug the real Miss Burnett and then throw her off a cliff.

Admittedly Hardt seems a decent sort, and there was something to admire in Tiel's efficiency in dealing with any problems, and with warding off Hardt's advances, but even so!

Then at the halfway stage we get a reveal that makes sense of it all.  The real Miss Burnett miraculously survived being thrown off the cliff, and consequently the British, now aware of the German plan, have replaced the real Ashington and Tiel with a RN Commander and his wife; the neat idea being to turn the tables and lure the German U-boats into a trap.

The second half of the film moves to the high seas, when Hardt, now aware of the deception,  manages to take command of a local ferry, with the help of some German POWs.  It's moderately exciting stuff, which ends with the ferry being sunk, irony of ironies, by Hardt's own U-boat, and with him going to his death by refusing to leave the sinking ship.

It's a good tale, well told, with some nice touches of humour such as the local reverend and his wife who keep getting rebuffed by the fake Miss Burnett, or the relationship between the ferry's captain and his grumpy chief engineer.

The main interest in the film is the relationship between Hardt and the fake Miss Burnett.  There is a scene where he manages to kiss her, and the film hints at her not finding him unattractive. At the very least she recognises some decency in him which means she is saddened by his death.

It's a pity that this relationship is not developed more. For example, nothing is done with the fact that she is on the ferry that Hardt has taken over.

Even so it's a promising start to Powell and Pressburger's illustrious careers.