Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)

Directed by

Anatole Litvak

Genre

drama film, war film, propaganda film, spy film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 44m

Rated

NR

Rating

6.1 of 10 from 34 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

An FBI agent investigates a Nazi spy ring operating in the United States before World War II. The film follows his efforts to expose the spies and stop their operations.

tenseurgentgrimpropagandisticseriousfast-pacedpolitically chargedanxious

What happens

Confessions of a Nazi Spy is a 1939 American spy political thriller film directed by Anatole Litvak for Warner Bros. Pictures. It was the first explicitly anti-Nazi film to be produced by a major Hollywood studio, being released in May 1939, four months before the beginning of World War II in Europe, and two and a half years before the United States' official entry into the war. The film stars Edward G. Robinson, Francis Lederer, George Sanders, Paul Lukas, and a large cast of German actors, including some who had emigrated from their country after the rise of Adolf Hitler. Many of the German actors who appeared in the film changed their names for fear of reprisals against relatives still living in Germany. Harry, Albert, and Jack Warner, who then owned Warner Bros, were Jewish. The film's story is based on a series of articles by FBI officer Leon G. Turrou, recounting his investigation of Nazi spy rings in the United States. Parts of the film are drawn from the Rumrich spy case, the first major international espionage case in American history. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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