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ContrabandRating:
Release Date: 24 April, 2001 Retail Price: $29.95 OUR Price: $26.96 You SAVE: $2.99! Cast: Complete Cast (7 total) |
Contraband Reviews
Sublime early Archers, spy thriller as dance of Eros.
'Contrabond' is only the second of the mighty Powell and Pressburger collaborations, and already we can see perfectly formed the unique, treasurable characteristics of their exhilerating genius. A tale of spies tryig to outfoil the Nazis, if the film was intended as a propaganda effort, than it goes off the standard rails pretty quickly. true, the central narrative arc, of an indifferent neutral forced to take a moral stand during the war, inspired by romance, is similar to the later 'Casablanca' (in which star Conrad Veidt featured) and many Humphrey Bogart films of the 1940s.
But it is in comparison to another future Bogart film that 'Contraband''s true flavour lies - 'the Big Sleep'. Ken Russell has called it ' a light, romantic comedy with bondage overtones', and the relationship between the two leads begins with ship captain Veidt threatening to put intransigent passenger Valerie Hobson in irons. Later scenes include the pair being roped toether in a dark basement spied on by Nazi voyeurs (including a coded lesbian), an escape involving Hobson's long legs as a knife, and badinage on a bus of flagrantly transparent doubles entendres. the emphasis on grills, lifts and confined spaces, or fetishistic imagery such as an all-female nightclub band whose legs are mannequins', or the surreal attic stuffed with plaster busts of Chamberlain, add to this sexually fantastic atmosphere. this is a spy thriller in which genre mechanics and development are always erotic, and in which the centre of activity is appropriately a cinema. you could look at 'Contraband' as a benevolent version of Powell's later, darker masterpiece 'Peeping Tom'.
this is not to say the wartime setting is mere backdrop. Like many of the Archers' films, there is a strong documentary element underpinning the fantasy, with a gorgeous montage of ships that could have come from an (unusually good) Grierson factual film (or Powell's earlier 'Red Ensign'). There is a rare vision of the London blackout with its practical difficulties (providing the film with its metaphors of light and darkness). Magically, solid, urban London is turned by the enterprising captain into a navigable ocean.
Most characteristic of Powell and Pressburger is the tacit opposition between Nazism, with its nihilistic form of nationalism, and the beautiful portrait of the Danish emigres. this at first seems to be a pretext for stereotypes and jokes about modern Vikings, but it soon becomes apparent that the Archers are celebrating this form of nationalism, free from blustering jingoism, one at ease in and with other cultures, one based on shared experience, history, friendship, loyalty and memory, on the civilised bonds of culture - food and music. A remarkable film, with some of the most extraordinary, emotive camerawork and idiosyncratic editing in British cinema.
Conrad Veidt rocks
The 'old brands' are dead, so the newspapers say. Owners of copyrights of The Three Stooges are desperately trying to get young people interested in them again, the Looney Tunes gang are being tricked out in hip-hop clothes (ick ick ick) to try to interest todays kids.....well, Conrad Veidt needs no such crutches. True, the movie is in black and white which means today's youth won't watch it...til they grow a little older and learn that blacker is better (sort of like Gene Wilder and his Young Frankenstein.) It's WWII and Veidt, a German actor, here plays a Danish ship captain (have to explain his accent) whose ship is halted overnight by customs on a through voyage. A passenger (Valerie Hobson) jumps ship and Captain Andersen (Veidt) is determined to get her back at all costs. They arrive via train in London in the middle of a blackout (one of the film's original titles) and Hobson proceeds to lead Veidt on a merry chase. An excellent screen duo, if you like this movie you absolutely must get their first pairing, The Spy In Black. That one will have you in tears at the ending!
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