(U-Boat 29)
Country: GB
Technical: bw 82m
Director: Michael Powell
Cast: Conrad Veidt, Valerie Hobson, Hay Petrie, Marius Goring, June Duprez, Sebastian Shaw, Torin Thatcher
Synopsis:
During World War One, a German submarine captain is sent to Scotland to reconnoitre the British fleet preparatory to a pre-emptive strike. His contact is masquerading as an English schoolmistress on Orkney.
Review:
In so many respects this could be a Hitchcock property: sabotage plot, eccentric characterisations, telling close-ups, expressionist lighting, and lashings of humour, as in the preoccupation with rationed items like butter. However, to spend two thirds of the film on an on-duty romance between a U-boat skipper and his fellow-German contact could only come from the pen of Emeric Pressburger. The fact that they are about to sink a whole fleet of destroyers off Scapa Flow, and that England was about to be plunged into war again, hardly seems to register, as Hobson's double agent nimbly steps from one predicament into another. The rival bonhomie extends to the submarine officers left on board, with a genuine sense of bereavement when they are shelled. The chemistry between Hobson and Veidt was so good they quickly made a Blitz-set follow-up, called Contraband (1940).
(U-Boat 29)
Country: GB
Technical: bw 82m
Director: Michael Powell
Cast: Conrad Veidt, Valerie Hobson, Hay Petrie, Marius Goring, June Duprez, Sebastian Shaw, Torin Thatcher
Synopsis:
During World War One, a German submarine captain is sent to Scotland to reconnoitre the British fleet preparatory to a pre-emptive strike. His contact is masquerading as an English schoolmistress on Orkney.
Review:
In so many respects this could be a Hitchcock property: sabotage plot, eccentric characterisations, telling close-ups, expressionist lighting, and lashings of humour, as in the preoccupation with rationed items like butter. However, to spend two thirds of the film on an on-duty romance between a U-boat skipper and his fellow-German contact could only come from the pen of Emeric Pressburger. The fact that they are about to sink a whole fleet of destroyers off Scapa Flow, and that England was about to be plunged into war again, hardly seems to register, as Hobson's double agent nimbly steps from one predicament into another. The rival bonhomie extends to the submarine officers left on board, with a genuine sense of bereavement when they are shelled. The chemistry between Hobson and Veidt was so good they quickly made a Blitz-set follow-up, called Contraband (1940).
