Contraband (1940)

Cautiously Recommended

UK
Feature Film
Director: Michael Powell
Writers: Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell, Brock Williams
Cinematographer: F.A. Young
Composers: Richard Addinsell, John Greenwood
Cast: Conrad Veidt, Valerie Hobson, Hay Petrie, Joss Ambler, Raymond Lovell, Esmond Knight, Charles Victor, Phoebe Kershaw

Contraband is an entertaining if rather light and forgettable first collaboration between Powell and Pressburger, which, in its first half, a relaxed and amiable journey towards destinations unknown, gently points towards the future wonders that the partnership would produce, but in its second half, as spies are unmasked and motivations revealed, it all becomes a little familiar and rather tedious if, never the less, still reasonably entertaining. Iain.Stott