The Spy in Black (1939)

The Spy in Black (1939) is a British espionage World War One submarine and double agent spy noir, and the first collaboration between the filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. 

These two visionaries of the mid-century were brought together by Alexander Korda to make this World War I spy thriller novel of the same title by Joseph Storer Clouston into a film. 

Powell and Pressburger eventually made over 20 films during the course of their partnership.

49th Parallel (1941)

49th Parallel (1941) is a wartime hunted-man-narrative adventure road movie-style Nazi espionage chase propaganda thriller, in which a World War II U-boat crew are stranded in northern Canada, and to avoid internment, they must make their way to the border and get into the still-neutral U.S

While not under any circumstance a film noir and containing nothing within its narratives nor stylings which might help classify it or tend it towards discussing in the film noir for a of our own reflective times, 49th Parallel (1941) does depend on themes of espionage and manhunting , while also and most curiously profiling Nazis as the protagonists.

This is an effective narrative route, for the large part because Powell and Pressburger did not make films which heavily patronised, satirised, demonised and ridiculed the Third Reichers of the early 1940s. 

Contraband (1940)

Contraband (1940) is a Powell and Pressburger British espionage wartime maritime female super hero nautical erotic romance thriller with shades of the early noir style, and shades too of what may be called 'camp expressionism' or 'expressionist camp', along with very early noir-style markers apparent in the blackout-Britain style approach which presents a wartime underworld London, in a time of real peril, when national identity becomes a matter of life and death, and where pluck and humour bob to the surface to provide the Limey noir feel that only the besieged Britain could provide, offering in fact what became the cementing of several clichés for all time including the female spy hero.

Without any shadow of a doubt it is time once more to turn to Dan Hodges and his studies on spy noir and its place in the origins of film noir in the UK and the US.