Content area
Full Text
Compared to most films made by director Michael Powell and scenarist Emeric Pressburger, Contraband has received relatively little attention.1 In many ways, it resembles their earlier collaborations tentatively exploring different forms of British cinematic traditions as in The Spy in Black (1939), The 49th Parallel (1 941 ), and One of our Aircraft is Missing (1 942) before their more challenging films such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1 943) onwards. However, Contraband merges espionage thriller, German expressionism, American screwball comedy, and early sound UFA-influenced light romanticism in a manner anticipating the creative blurring of cinematic boundaries that the Archers excelled in. Their second collaboration reunited two stars from The Spy in Black. It also saw their first association with German art director Alfred Junge. Contraband has more than one reason for consideration as a key example of cinematic collaboration, an aspect Powell learned from his apprenticeship in the Rex Ingram Studios in Nice during the 1920s. It furnishes a case study for this issue's focus on "collaborations that might have been ongoing." Director, scenarist, and stars previously worked on The Spy in Black. In this sense Contraband is not actually a "one time effort". But its appearance at a particular historical moment in British cinema, during a time when British cinematic 1930s cross-cultural fertilization of European and Hollywood styles was still possible, also makes it a "one time effort." Contraband was released at the end of the "phony war" when the German Army advanced successfully into Western Europe. British cinema and society then adopted a more nationalistic and serious direction with Churchill offering the British people "blood, sweat, and tears" as the only reward for winning the war. Light-hearted espionage comedy thrillers such as Contraband now became impossible for British authences experiencing Luftwaffe bombing raids.
Contraband appears not only as a "one time effort" in terms of style and theme but also a collaborative effort that "might have been ongoing" had cultural and historical circumstances been different. All key players contributed their own types of unique creative talent from particular cinematic backgrounds making Contraband a significant example of cultural collaboration during the time of its production. It contains many types of European sophisticated humor. However British wartime cinema soon took...
