Contraband (1940)

Directed by

Michael Powell

Genre

spy film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 31m

Rated

NR

Rating

7.1 of 10 from 22 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A Danish ship captain gets caught up in a spy network while trying to clear his name during World War II. He and his wife work to outsmart Nazi agents in a blacked-out London.

tensedarkly comicsuspensefulcleverquick-wittedwartimestylishbrisk

What happens

Contraband (U.S.: Blackout) is a 1940 wartime spy film by the British director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, which reunited stars Conrad Veidt and Valerie Hobson after their earlier appearance in The Spy in Black the previous year. On this occasion, Veidt plays a hero, something he did not do very often, and there is also an early (uncredited) performance by Leo Genn. The title of the film in the United States was Blackout. Powell writes in his autobiography, A Life in Movies, as saying that the U.S. renaming was a better title and he wished he had thought of it. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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