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Contraband [1940] aka 'Blackout'
Directed by Michael Powell
Screenplay by Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell, Brock Williams
On hearing a report that Mrs. Sorensen (Valerie Hobson) refuses to wear a life jacket onboard as ordered by the ships captain (Conrad Veidt):
Captain Anderson: "When I saw her come aboard, I knew we were in for trouble."
Crewman: "Did you, sir?"
Captain Anderson: "Not that I don't like them that way."
Conrad Veidt is best known for his sneering nazi role of Major Strasser in the Bogart-Bergman Casablanca (1942), but Veidt had a long career before that (for example, he's the sleepwalker Cesare in the original 1920 Cabinet of Dr. Caligari). Altogether, Veidt appeared in 118 films before his death in 1943 from a heart attack.
Valerie Hobson is famous for being the human bride of Doc Frankenstein in James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and for a variety of British films (such as the Alec Guinness black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets). "Bride" was an early part and was followed with other similar secondary wife roles before she quit Hollywood in frustration and returned to England for the remainder of her career of over 50 films.
In the World War II drama Contraband, the film title refers to the definition of freight on ships which would penetrate the Allied embargo and end up in the hands of the German enemy. In a rare 'hero' role, Veidt is a Danish sea captain who is stopped by the Royal Navy en route for Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and while held up by red tape at port, two of his passengers sneak ashore to London using his stolen landing passes. Veidt follows in pursuit, determined to bring both back aboard, and also because he has more than a passing interest in the passenger "Mrs. Sorensen" (played by Hobson).
Soon finding himself up to his neck in German spies, Veidt's Captain Andersen enlists help from a group of Danish waiters from a restaurant run by a brother to one of his ships crewmen. Soon these Danes are chasing all over the blacked-out landscape of nighttime London, but don't really know why they're getting into brawls and charging from one night-club to another as Veidt hunts for the kidnapped Mrs. Sorensen, but as Andersen says to them "if you're all Danes, you don't need a reason for fighting."
The direction and story from Michael Powell has Hitchcockian elements in the circumstances these characters find themselves tangled into, with imprisonments, double-identities, escapes, and inky dark shadows obscuring the situations. But, Director Powell includes a great deal of humor to the proceedings, and Veidt seems to relish the unusual chance to grimace and provide suave line readings for the Allied team fighting the nazis, which in reality had driven him out of his native Germany in 1933 under the threat of death for his politically incorrect attitudes.
Kino Sells a DVD of the film Contraband through amazon.com
Original Page Aug 2011 | Updated January 2012
New Jean Harlow book
I've not seen a copy of the book yet, but simply put, the Vieira Hollywood picture-books are the best albums on Hollywood, bar none, for well over a decade now. No one puts as much attention to the production aspects, design, picture choices, and then ladles the whole affair with affection and admiration in the text. Classic Hollywood has not had a modern explainer and admirer like Vieira for decades now, and the taste and skill brought to bear on his books make them both readable-fun and collectible (some of his past books are out of print and instead of dropping down to the remainder pricing so many used Hollywood books seem to end up at, his instead get harder to find and buy).
Book is by Darrell Rooney and Mark Vieira, 240 pages, Angel City Press. Available from amazon.com
New Book: Broken Silence: Conversations with 23 Silent Film Stars
This is a collection of 23 original interviews with stars of the silent screen, with biographical information and a filmography included for each.
Interviewed are Lew Ayres, William Bakewell, Lina Basquette, Madge Bellamy, Eleanor Boardman, Ethlyne Clair, Junior Coghlan, Joyce Compton, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Dorothy Gulliver, Maxine Elliott Hicks, Dorothy Janis, George Lewis, Marion Mack, Patsy Ruth Miller, Lois Moran, Baby Marie Osborne, Muriel Ostriche, Eddie Quillan, Esther Ralston, Dorothy Revier, David Rollins and Gladys Walton.
About the Author Michael G. Ankerich is a writer whose work focuses on the silent film era of Hollywood. A former newspaper reporter, he has written extensively for Classic Images, Films of the Golden Age, and Hollywood Studio Magazine, which featured his interview with Butterfly McQueen (Prissy) on the 50th anniversary of the release of Gone With The Wind.
Book is 319 pages, McFarland. Available from amazon.com
New Busby Berkeley book
Maybe the most revered of musical directors was the extreme-stylist of the golden era of Hollywood movies, Busby Berkeley, a man who changed what a stage-production meant on film by taking the camera and making it move like a winged-eye that could see the motion of actors from every angle. Whether they were underwater, behind glass, or below a skyward lense, Berkeley made synchronized motion more than a filmed reproduction of a Broadway play.
Book is by Jeffrey Spivak, 408 pages, University Press of Kentucky. Available from amazon.com