CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY (1939)

While the rest of Hollywood ignored the rise of the Third Reich for fear of losing their German market, Anatole Litvak, the son of Jewish immigrants born in the Ukraine, tackled the subject head on. The script was inspired by an actual investigation, the 1938 Rumrich Nazi Spy Case, and Litvak shot in a near-documentary style, with his only concession to Hollywood being the casting of star Edward G. Robinson as the FBI agent investigating German attempts to spy on U.S. military capabilities. Jack Warner posted extra guards at the studio because of protests from isolationists and American Nazis, and some German-born cast members asked not to be named in the credits for fear of reprisals against family members still living overseas (payroll simply listed them as numbers). The finished film hit too close for Adolf Hitler, who retaliated by threatening to ban all Warner Bros. movies that employed anyone involved with this scathing drama. 

d. Anatole Litvak, 104m, DCP

Restoration by Warner Bros. Discovery.