Tonight's Movie: Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) - A Warner Archive Blu-ray Review

CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY (1939) will be released next week on Blu-ray by the Warner Archive Collection.

This is a movie I'd somehow not yet caught up with, despite my great interest in the films of World War II. CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY, filmed under tight security early in 1939, is widely considered one of the most significant propaganda films released before America's entry into the war a couple years later.

In fact, as Chris Yogerst recounts in HOLLYWOOD HATES HITLER!, this Warner Bros. film helped spur a Senate investigation into Hollywood "warmongering" in September 1941, an effort which was ultimately pushed aside by the events of December 7, 1941.

Viewed from today, the movie is not only an interesting slice of both film and World War II history, but a cautionary tale for our present about forced conformity of thought.

The movie was written by Milton Krims and John Wexley based on articles by Leon G. Terrou. The screenplay spends roughly the first 45 minutes methodically laying out the workings of a Nazi propaganda and spy ring in the United States, led by Paul Lukas, George Sanders, and Francis Lederer.

Lederer, it should be noted, starred the following year in another important pre-Pearl Harbor anti-Nazi film, 20th Century-Fox's THE MAN I MARRIED (1940).

CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY is sufficiently interesting that for a while I forgot Edward G. Robinson was in the film, especially as there are no opening credits.

Just about the time I started wondering about Robinson, he finally enters the movie with a terrific shot as someone hands him a document to review.

Robinson plays a dedicated FBI agent who works tirelessly to break up the spy ring and bring the perpetrators to justice. His mellow investigatory personality in this made me think of another good film he made a few years later, THE STRANGER (1946), in which he's also pursuing a Nazi in the U.S.

Indeed, in his 1975 book on Robinson's films, the esteemed historian Foster Hirsch writes that Robinson's "restraint counteracts the operatics of George Sanders and Paul Lukas." Hirsch calls this film Robinson's "most understated work of the decade...a premonition of a subtler, mellower style that distinguished much of his work in the forties and fifties."

In contrast, as hinted above by Hirsch, the Nazi characters in this are not at all subtle and the audience manipulation is quite evident, though it would be hard to find anyone disagreeing with the film's point of view, myself included. Despite (and sometimes because of) a tendency towards melodrama, the film is an entertaining and fast-moving 104 minutes.

Anatole Litvak directed, with black and white photography by Sol Polito and the uncredited Ernest Haller. The musical score is by Max Steiner.

As is typical -- and wonderful -- of movies of the era, there are some marvelous faces who pop up throughout, including Henry O'Neill, Ward Bond, Joe Sawyer, John Ridgely, John Hamilton, James Stephenson, and Sig Ruman. The narrator is John Deering.

As is typical for the Warner Archive Collection, this Blu-ray looks and sounds terrific.

The Warner Archive Blu-ray includes the trailer and a 20-minute Technicolor short, MEET THE FLEET (1940), with Robert Armstrong, George Reeves, Herbert Anderson, and William T. Orr, directed by B. Reeves Eason.

The disc also includes a slide show presenting the film's historical context; it concludes with excerpts from Harry Warner's testimony before Congress in the fall of 1941. It's worth taking time to read these cards before starting the movie.

CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY is well worth seeing, history and solid entertainment combined into one package. Recommended.

Thanks to the Warner Archive for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray. Warner Archive Blu-rays may be ordered from the Amazon Warner Archive Collection Store, Movie Zyng, or from any online retailers were Blu-rays are sold.

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