Contraband (1940)
It's November, 1939, and Captain Anderson (Conrad Veidt) has a problem. His neutral Danish freighter, sailing from the U.S. to Denmark, has been stopped by the British navy and forced to an English port while its cargo is inspected. He has several passengers on board who are forbidden to disembark. He and his first mate (Hay Petrie) are invited that night to dinner with the British officers of the port. They receive two passes enabling them to leave the ship. As they get ready, Anderson discovers the passes are missing...and so are two of the passengers, Mrs. Sorensen (Valerie Hobson) and Mr. Pidgeon (Esmond Knight). Yet apparently neither knew each other or had even conversed during the long sea voyage. Anderson is determined to bring them back to his ship. He realizes they must be on their way to London and sets out to stop them. Within hours he finds himself entangled with Nazi spies, British agents, Danish waiters and thuggish heavies. In fact, he finds himself in the middle of a stylish, funny, romantic and patriotic espionage adventure which takes place almost entirely in the blacked-out streets of London and in some fine looking restaurants and nightclubs.
This was the first movie Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger fully collaborated on, following The Spy in Black the year before. With Spy, Pressburger had been assigned the writing job and he and Powell realized how much they agreed on the kind and style of movies they wanted to make. With Contraband, they set to work on the movie together. They cemented their partnership with The 49th Parallel (1941) and followed it with One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942). In 1943, with The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, they had become The Archers, agreeing to take joint and equal credit for the writing, directing and producing of their movies. And what movies they were. Through 1949, The Archers created, in addition to Blimp, A Canterbury Tale (1944), I Know Where I'm Going (1945), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948) and The Small Back Room (1949). I can't think of any individual or pair of movie makers who were responsible for so many creative, idiosyncratic, different and just plain great movies as these two.
Contraband, like all their movies, doesn't fit the norm of any genre film. One critic said of it, "It's worth thinking about how such a lighthearted film could be made out of such a dire moment in British history...but it's not to missed." Conrad Veidt, the great actor who fled Germany in 1933, plays Captain Andersen as a stern, imposing man who has a taste for adventure and a liking for a smart, resourceful woman like Mrs. Sorensen...who, of course, is not married, is not named Sorensen, and is as brave and smart as they come. The movie is fast-paced and uses the dark streets of London at night to great effect. Powell builds amusing and effective set pieces which keep driving the story forward. I liked a lot Andersen and Mrs. Sorensen having a duel of a dinner at Erik Skold's restaurant, the escape from the darkened room, Andersen's recruitment of the Danish waiters and his navigation skills with a map of London to locate where he and Mrs. Sorensen had been held. Powell uses the busts of the Patriotic Plaster Products Co. for a dramatic and amusing shootout. If you look closely, you can briefly see a handful of actors, mostly unbilled, some in their first movie roles, who later became well known, such as Leo Genn, Deborah Kerr, Bernard Miles, Milo O'Shea and Peter Bull.
Contraband is highly recommended if you are a fan of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It's also recommended if you just like well-made, amusing, romantic espionage movies. There are no extras. The DVD picture looks better than average, but the movie qualifies for a major restoration.
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