Saturday, 9 May 2015

Contraband (1940)

Thigh-slapping wartime adventure by Powell and Pressburger and starring the great German actor Conrad Veidt.

Danish ship's captain Andersen is delayed leaving port and soon finds himself dragged into intrigue by the mysterious Mrs.Sorensen (Valerie Hobson). After a series of night-time adventures on the streets of blacked-out London they are captured by the evil Nazi spymaster Van Dyne, but Anderson escapes and, with the help of a Danish restauranteur and his fighting waiters, they track down Van Dyne, save Mrs. Sorensen and put paid to the deadly German plot.

Although not in the same league as some Powell and Pressburger films, A Matter of Life and Death or The Red Shoes for instance, this is still an excellently made and rip-roaringly fun piece of propaganda. Valerie Hobson is as regal and full of class as you would expect from the woman who played the adult Estella in  Great Expectations, though she's a lot warmer in this part. Conrad Veidt, who left Germany in 1933 as a reaction to the rise of the Nazi party, is stirring and commanding in the part of Andersen. It was a great pity, and a great loss, that he would die of a heart attack just a couple of years later, one of his last roles being in Casablanca.
I love this type of movie, and nobody made them better than P&P.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032356/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_10




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