The Spy in Black

The Spy in Black is a 1939 British war thriller directed by Michael Powell, in which a German U-boat captain lands in the Orkney Islands during World War I to help sink the British fleet at Scapa Flow. It is best remembered as the first collaboration between Powell and the Hungarian-born screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, a partnership that became one of the most successful in British cinema.^{1 • 2}

Production and the Powell–Pressburger partnership

For his first project under a contract with Alexander Korda's London Films, Powell was introduced to the young Hungarian screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, who had worked his way up in the script department of Germany's UFA studio before leaving for Paris after Hitler came to power and arriving in London in 1935.^{2 • 9} Working from Roland Pertwee's adaptation of J. Storer Clouston's 1917 novel, the two reshaped what Powell called "a creaky old story" of World War I intrigue as a vehicle for the stars Conrad Veidt and Valerie Hobson.⁹

The film was completed in 1938 but held back from release by Korda until August 1939, just before war broke out between Britain and Germany.⁹ It was produced by Irving Asher, head of Columbia's British production, as one of Columbia's "quota acquisitions," and it marked the first collaboration of Powell and Pressburger.¹ Filming took place in the Orkneys, Powell's second visit to the Scottish islands after his breakthrough feature The Edge of the World (1937).²

The pairing proved propitious. The Spy in Black was a hit in Britain and in the United States, and the partnership it began led the two men to form their own production company, The Archers Film Productions, in 1943, with joint titles as writer, producer, and director.^{2 • 5} Powell and Pressburger re-teamed with Veidt and Hobson almost immediately in Contraband (1939), released in the United States in 1940 as Blackout.¹

Release and reception

The film opened in the UK in August 1939, three weeks before the German invasion of Poland, and reached American screens in October 1939 under the title U-Boat 29.^{8 • 3} The American title capitalized on the real German submarine U-Boat 29, which had recently made headlines by sinking a British capital ship off the coast of England.⁹ The film appeared on the National Board of Review's "ten best" list of 1939.¹

Critics praised the direction and the acting. The New York Times reviewer Frank S. Nugent called it "the most exciting spy melodrama since the advent of the Second World War," and Variety found Veidt admirably suited to his strong role.¹⁰ On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 100% Tomatometer rating from 13 critics and a 69% audience score from more than 250 ratings.¹⁰

A sympathetic German on the eve of war

Released on the eve of World War II, the film treats its German protagonist with a humanity that later wartime propaganda did not. The BFI's program notes contrast it with Powell and Pressburger's 49th Parallel (1941), made as an unambiguous propaganda film: although both feature a U-boat commander, Captain Hardt is shown with an easy friendship with his colleague Schuster (Marius Goring) and is "altogether a more honourable German" than his counterpart Lieutenant Hirth.² The French Cinémathèque describes the film as adopting the enemy's point of view and multiplying plot twists far from any simple moralism.⁴

This dimension carried extra weight because of the cast. Veidt, the star of the expressionist classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), had fled Nazi Germany for Britain, as had Pressburger, and both men's presence gave the film what the BFI calls an "undeniable extra frisson."^{2 • 8} Reviewers have also noted the film's atmosphere: Time Out's Derek Adams wrote that darkness, foreboding, and regret, rather than propaganda, dominate this "extraordinarily atmospheric" spy story made on the eve of World War II.¹⁰

The film's timing gave it an unintended resonance. Scapa Flow was still Britain's main naval base in 1939, and the real sinking of the battleship HMS Royal Oak by Günther Prien's U-boat in October 1939, in which a German submarine captain had studied the harbor's entrances, made the film's premise, in one scholarly account's words, seem "weirdly prophetic."^{6 • 11}

Versions and running time

Sources give slightly different running times: the American Film Institute catalog lists 77 minutes for the US release, the BFI Player lists 1 hour 19 minutes, and the Cinémathèque française lists 82 minutes.^{1 • 8 • 4} The film carries a British U certificate (contains mild threat) and is available on home video and streaming platforms.⁸

References

1. U-Boat 29 (1939), AFI Catalog of Feature Films
2. The Spy in Black, BFI Southbank Programme Notes, Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell + Pressburger
3. The Spy in Black, TCM article by James Steffen (2010)
4. L'Espion noir (Michael Powell, 1939), La Cinémathèque française
5. Powell and Pressburger, TCM article
6. The Spy in Black (1939), Classic Film Noir review
7. Watch The Spy In Black, Turner Classic Movies
8. Watch The Spy in Black online, BFI Player
9. Voyager: Powell and Pressburger Biography, powell-pressburger.org
10. The Spy in Black, Rotten Tomatoes
11. The representation of reality, UCL Discovery (dissertation)

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

© 2026 Biostate AI. Free to use with credit under the Edgepedia Community License. Embed a reference card.