The Spy in Black (1939)

The Spy in Black aka U-Boat 29

British "quota quickie" based on the WWI espionage novel of the same title by Scottish author J. Storer Clouston. This movie is most notable as the first teaming of director Michael Powell and writer Emeric Pressburger, the duo would go on to have a successful multi-decade movie making partnership and become collectively known as "The Archers" or just "P & P". Having now seen this film, which I'd long been curious about, my first instinct is to assure you that the duos work gets better with subsequent films. That is not to say that The Spy in Black is a bad film, it was pretty well received in its time and today should be regarded as fair in quality.

The story is perhaps a little complicated and has to deal with German efforts to get British navel plans from a disgruntled officer. This scheme requires kidnapping a young women on her way to the Isle of Hoy to serve as a new school teacher and replacing her with a German agent, it also requires secreting a German U-boat Captain onto the same island to met with the treasonous English officer. Like later Archers films with their strong evocations of a particular British setting, like I Know Where I'm Going with the Isle of Mull or  A Canterbury Tale with, well Canterbury, The Spy in Black evokes its isolated location in the Orkney Islands, a small chain north of Scotland that due to its out of the way  location was an important safe staging point for British vessels during both World Wars.

The story does have one pretty good twist that I honestly didn't see coming, but is talkie without being much involving (something that is not an issue in later P&P films), and the action sequences not particularly thrilling. The movie does however show signs of the structural innovation that would become a P&P hallmark, and the teams instance on bringing depth to German characters who might otherwise just be throw away villains. **