| Contraband (Blackout) |
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Poster from trade screening 20 March 1940 |
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| Directed by | Michael Powell |
| Produced by | John Corfield |
| Written by | Story & Screenplay: Emeric Pressburger Scenario: Michael Powell Brock Williams |
| Starring | Conrad Veidt Valerie Hobson |
| Music by | Richard Addinsell John Greenwood Direction, Muir Mathieson |
| Cinematography | Freddie Young |
| Editing by | John Seabourne |
| Distributed by | Anglo-American |
| Release date(s) | 11 May 1940 (UK) 29 November (US) |
| Running time | 92 min. (UK) 80 min. (US) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English Danish |
| Budget | £47,000 (est.) |
Contraband (1940) is a wartime spy film by the British director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, which brought stars Conrad Veidt and Valerie Hobson together again after their success in The Spy in Black the previous year.
The title of the film in the United States was Blackout. Powell is quoted in his book A Life On Film, that the US renaming was a better title and he wished he had thought of it.
Many people find it refreshing to see Conrad Veidt playing a hero character; something he was not allowed to do very often. There is also an early uncredited performance by Leo Genn.
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Danish Captain Andersen (Conrad Veidt) is stopped for a cargo inspection in a British Contraband Control Port in the first year of World War II, before Denmark has been occupied by the Germans. He gets some shore passes for himself and his First Officer but they are stolen by passengers Mrs. Sorensen (Valerie Hobson) and Mr. Pidgeon (Esmond Knight) who take a boat and go ashore. Capt. Andersen decides to follow them and the journey takes them through blacked-out London and to various strange characters and adventures.
Also making their screen debut were director Michael Powell's golden cocker spaniels, Erik and Spangle, who went on to appear in the Powell and Pressburger films The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) and A Matter of Life and Death, also known as Stairway to Heaven (1946).[2]
Contraband was intended as a followup to Powell and Pressburger's The Spy in Black, which was filmed at the end of 1938, but was not released by Alexander Korda for almost a year.[3] The current film was in production from 16 December 1939 through 27 January 1940 [4] at Denham Film Studios, with location shooting in London at Chester Square in Belgravia, and in Ramsgate in Kent.[5]
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