I Was a Spy

Based on the memoir by wartime Belgian nurse Marthe Gnockhaert (1892-1966) - whose story resembles Edith Cavell's except she lived to tell the tale - and prefaced by a quote from former Secretary for War Winston S. Churchill. This lavish but bleak espionage drama set in Belgium in 1915 boasting fluid photography by imported Hollywood cameraman Charles Van Enger and handsome sets including a huge and imposing town square filled with parading Germans was voted the year's best film by the readers of 'Film Weekly'.

The cast includes later members of Hollywood's British community Edmund Gwenn and Nigel Bruce, with Conrad Veidt flashing his teeth ten years before his definitive Nazi swine Major Strasser in 'Casablanca'. The resistance interestingly includes a lot of women (including Martita Hunt in a rare non-eccentric role); while it doesn't spare us the spectacle of British planes strafing an outdoor prayer service and the development of poison gas ("How can chemists win the war?")

This briskly paced, highly suspenseful cinematic rendering of the war-time exploits of Martha Cnockhaert, a Belgian girl who reluctantly engaged in espionage work for the Allies during the Great War, is a must see for all who appreciate war films sans the usual cheap, one-sided displays of gratuitous propaganda masquerading as history that the various film factories seem to have a penchant for putting out. A great deal of the credit must go to director Victor Saville, who managed to refrain from incorporating any of the typically lurid tales of German atrocities allegedly perpetrated on the prostrate Belgians that had become the mainstay of the British disinformation network throughout the greater part of the war itself. The actual situation, as this film so ably depicts, was bad enough. For example, largely on account of the British naval blockade, the occupying Germans had to impose severe privations on the Belgian people who, as a result, were forced to hoard what little food there was for their own survival. Indeed, it was the witnessing of the constant abuse inflicted on her café-owning parents that spurred Martha to overcome her initial fear and enlist her services for the Belgian underground.

The beautiful Madeleine Carroll gives a convincing, at times deeply moving, portrait of the reluctant Belgian spy whose work as a volunteer nurse in a hospital for wounded Germans complicates her efforts to aid in their ultimate destruction. Indeed, ironically it is her dedicated work in relieving the suffering of war-- not to mention her exquisite beauty and charm- that endears her to the German commandant-- played by the great Conrad Veidt-- enabling her her to carry out more effectively her clandestine activities.

Perhaps the supreme irony of this film, however, resides in the fact that within 10 years, the woman who would play a volunteer nurse/spy in a movie would in real life give up her film career to volunteer as a real life Red Cross nurse in Italy during the sequel to the Great War. For that, Madeleine Carroll will, indeed, always be fondly remembered.

I Was A Spy is one of the better pictures to emerge from the early days of British talkies. It certainly stands up well against its American competition, which sad to say, many other British pictures of this period don't. The cast is uniformly good, and Madeleine Carroll is lovely as always. Perhaps the only reservations I have in this area is the way in which Herbert Marshall can deliver his lines a bit mechanically at times. Victor Saville's direction is nicely understated, yet the film can be quite exciting at times. There are two memorable scenes - the church parade, and the quietly effective closing moments of the film. Well worth seeing.

Madeleine Carroll plays Martha Cnockhaert, a Belgian nurse who spied for the British during the First World War.

The movie is based on Miss Cnockhaert's memoirs of the same title .... ghost-written by her husband, John 'Jock' McKenna. It's a highly romantic view of the trade, with Herbert Marshall as her lover and fellow spy, Edmund Gwenn as the town's mayor, and Conrad Veidt giving a very creepy performance as the commander of the German occupying forces. Miss Carroll gives a fine, layered performance, and while it is clear this was a major production for Gaumont British, with a large cast of extras, director Victor Saville focuses the camera on her. She's worth it.

There was a spate of women-spies-of-the-Great-War movies about this time from Hollywood. The best remembered one is probably MATA HARI, starring Greta Garbo. Hollywood offered a sexy, Pre-Code vision of espionage. This movie offers a less baroque, more intimate view.

Why do those Germans keep doing it? They tried to invade Paris in 1870, they tried in 1914, and they succeeded in 1940. What is it about French food that drives the Krauts so crazy that they feel they have to invade Paris so often? Can't they just go as tourists and eat in the best restaurants without bringing all their tanks and jackboots with them? 'Dirty swine!', as Herbert Marshall says in this film about two British prisoners, but which we find more appropriate to direct towards the wurst-lovers themselves. Here the heroic Madeleine Carroll plays 'Laura', code name for a Belgian nurse spying for the Allies against the Hun. The character is a portrayal of the real life Marthe Cnockhaerdt (1892-1966), and follows the true story very closely (although her two years in prison is skipped over so that her incarceration appears to be but a matter of days). Herbert Marshall gives what could be described as an 'ardent' performance, as he attempts to persuade us that he is in love with Madeleine Carroll, which he clearly found impossible. It is not for nothing that she was known as 'the ice queen of the screen'. Marshall was not really suited to these romantic roles, and was always best when being detached and sardonic, at which he truly excelled. Conrad Veidt here plays a formal and implacable German officer and lacks all those warm and sympathetic qualities which suited him so much better, and which came to the fore in such as films as CONTRABAND (1940, see my review). Of course this film is set during World War One, so we do not have Nazis yet, but we do have spiked helmets (which it is said the German soldiers wore in order to protect their pointy heads). It is an interesting historical irony that Carroll here plays a dedicated war nurse, whereas in real life Carroll did indeed become a dedicated war nurse in the following world war. In the film, she also becomes a spy, but in real life she presumably did not. But then, where is the dividing line between fiction and reality? If the fictitious nurse can become a real nurse, then it only takes one small further step for her to start smuggling those little notes written on cigarette paper. So perhaps Carroll didn't smoke. It was educationally useful, I am sure, for the English public to see this film set in Belgium, and to observe the suffering of the Belgians under the ruthless German occupation, considering that only a few years later this would all be happening for real once again. The Belgians and the Germans have since made up, however, as the Fourth Reich has its headquarters these days in Brussels, and I have heard it said that the obliging Belgians keep hot sauerkraut permanently ready for any surprise visit by die Kaiserin, who with her pudding face needs continual feeding up. This is a very fine, sensible, but gently old-fashioned spy film directed by the highly capable Victor Saville, whose most famous film was probably Kipling's KIM (1950). The affable Edmund Gwenn is very good as the Burgomaster of the small Belgian town, and it is interesting to see the legendary Gerald du Maurier (father of Daphne) as the military hospital's doctor, and what I noticed particularly about him were his elegant hands. The film also has a good cameo for Nigel Bruce, later to become so well known as Dr. Watson in so many Sherlock Holmes films. Here he plays Scottie, a captured British soldier who is wounded but escapes. He had only been in films for three years, and is still sprightly even though he was already aged 38. It is always interesting to catch such early glimpses of people who later become prominent in other roles.