Contraband
Powell and Pressburger’s second collaboration, 1940’s Contraband (aka Blackout) is a knockabout knock-off of Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps – two people yoked together against their will, a Nazi cell and so on – which also goes large on Hitchcock’s light-hearted energy and his fondness for a set piece. Conrad Veidt and Valerie Hobson had both been in P&P’s first collaboration, the previous year’s The Spy in Black, and this time around play a couple charging around London under blackout conditions. She’s a spy who stole the shore passes issued to Veidt’s Captain Andersen, a Danish sea captain whose freighter has been impounded by the British authorities. He’s keen to get them back and … Read more