As a special tribute to William K. Everson, PFA presents a favorite film by the late Michael Powell, who was Mr. Everson's friend, and of course a much admired artist. "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. (Even Hitchcock never came up with a gag quite as funny and as sad as the suspense sequence set in a warehouse stocked with now useless and unwanted busts of Neville Chamberlain!) Not a war film, yet dependent on war conditions for its plot, it utilized Veidt and 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)