“Contraband was one of the biggest British hits of the early days of the war, consolidating the success of the Powell-Pressburger teaming in their immediately prior The Spy in Black. It was a topical thriller, Hitchcockian in its mixture of suspense and comedy, yet somehow bizarre and perverse in its humor in ways that were uniquely P. and P. . . . Not a war film, yet dependent on war conditions for its plot, it utilized [Conrad] Veidt and [Valerie] Hobson as a kind of sandpaper-and-silk equivalent of Powell and Loy, and used many of the rapidly forming Powell and Pressburger stock company” (William K. Everson).