bkoganbing 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.

Leofwine_draca 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.

Robert J. Maxwell It's a surprising movie. It's set in 1917, in the middle of the First World War, and it was released in 1939, a year in which Britain was at war with Germany. Yet the opening scenes show us Conrad Veidt and his officers returning from a successful cruise on their U-boat, and they're given a respectable showing, slightly comic. After sixteen days of subsistence on tinned sardines and herring, they cheerfully order a stew at their hotel, only to be told that it's a meatless day. Veidt is treated with respect and even sympathy. They aren't at all the sneering Nazi bastards that would show up in some later war films.Veidt and crew are sent on a mission to the Orkney Islands, near the Grand Fleet, where they will meet a young woman who is a German agent. Cut to a young woman on her way to the Orkney Islands to become the new head school mistress. The young lady is June Duprez. She's one of those British actresses, like Merle Oberon, who, from certain angles, are so near feminine perfection that they defy description. Duprez' eyes are catlike, only lacking vertical pupils. Neither she nor Oberon had careers that really took off, probably because they were mediocre actresses. Yet -- yum.Is June Duprez the spy that Veidt is meant to contact? Certainly not. In fact, Duprez' is etherized, kidnapped by the innocent-seeming German agents and held in a remote stone cottage, while a agenuine German agent substitutes herself. The agent is Valerie Hobson. Now, Hobson herself is no slouch when it comes to pulchritude, but it's a qualitatively different order of attractiveness. Duprez looks like she should be seated on your lap and stroked. Hobson's beauty is arid, elongated, elegant and impenetrable. If she were any more statuesque she'd look as if being drawn through a black hole in space. Her appeal is of the genre that suggests any intimacy between you might lead to your having a red rubber ball strapped in your mouth. Later, when Veidt puts some moves on the fake schoolteacher, she shoes him off and says, "You're not one of my pupils." Hm.Veidt's submarine makes its way the the Isle of Hoy in the Orkneys and he goes ashore on a motorbike to rendezvous with the local German agent. While rehearsing the plans with his officers he's compelled to recite "Die Lorelei", a poem by Heinrich Heine, which I once thought was just an anonymous folk song. Heine, who died in 1851, was one of Germany's best-known poets and one of the good guys in that the Nazis hated his work and burned his books. Anyway, the officers get a kick out of seeing their stern captain spout poetry.On the island, Hobson puts Veidt up in a room. Veidt refuses to remove his uniform. "If I'm going to be shot, it will be as an officer, not a spy." He doesn't know it but he's stumbled into a trap, a little too complicated to explain. Everything turns out to the advantage of the British, but the Germans, however many mistakes they make, are never deprived of dignity and pride. The print available on YouTube is one of the most crisply defined I've watched. The model work is of the period but there are some fine shots of destroyers and cruisers at sea. All in all, it's a well-made and thoroughly entertaining film.

Frederick B Plant 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.