The Spy in Black

The Spy in Black is a 1939 British film, and the first collaboration between the British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. They were brought together by Alexander Korda to make the World War I spy thriller by Joseph Storer Clouston into a film. Powell and Pressburger went on to make over 20 more films together. The Spy in Black, which was released in the US as U-Boat 29, stars Conrad Veidt, Valerie Hobson, Sebastian Shaw and features Marius Goring. Captain Hardt , a World War I German submarine commander, is ordered to lead a mission to attack the British Fleet at Scapa Flow.... He puts ashore on the Orkney Islands to meet his contact but finds more than he bargained for in the local schoolmistress . Irving Asher, the producer of The Spy in Black, was the head of British production for Columbia Pictures, and the film was made as a "quota quickie", films made by the British units of American studios in order to fulfill a requirement of the British government that British cinemas show a certain amount of British product. Early in his career, director Michael Powell made quite a few of these films.
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