A poem recited in the moonlight-a coded message? Erotic moments between enemy operatives-or are they operatives? “I had no idea secret agent was such a comfortable profession,” remarks one to the other in Michael Powell's highly charged (in every way) thriller set in WWI but, importantly, made in 1939. Conrad Veidt is riveting as a German submarine captain lodged in the remote Scottish Orkney Islands, from where he will attempt to sink the British fleet. Valerie Hobson is his captive, and he hers, in a quaint little house in a quaint little village. The first from the celebrated Powell-Pressburger creative duo, The Spy in Black is “literate, exciting, extremely well-crafted-and in the early days of the war was rather comforting as well....The soon-to-be common notion that Britain was overrun by rather nice people, including little old ladies, who were actually German spies got the upcoming spy cycle off to a good start. (Here) was a Hitchcockian blending of humor and thrills” (William K. Everson).