This is exactly the kind of film I was thinking about when I decided to dedicate September to British cinema. Night Boat to Dublin isn’t splashy, original, or all that imaginative, but it is well-constructed, solidly made, and darn entertaining. It is the type of jolly-good spy-thriller that only the Brits can make.

At the height of World War II British Intelligence Services fear someone is passing information about the atomic bomb to Nazi Germany. Two intelligence officers, Captain Grant (Robert Newton) and Captain Wilson (Lawrence O’Madden) board the titular night boat to Dublin hoping to sniff him out. Suspicion quickly falls on Paul Faber (Raymond Lovell), a shady-looking lawyer.

Captain Grant secures a job in Faber’s offices posing as a down-and-out military man who (as the story he’s created for himself goes) has secretly gone AWOL. When Faber learns of this he blackmails Grant into doing some illegal business for him. This includes marrying Marion (Muriel Pavlow) an Austrian desperate to become a British citizen.

It is full of fun cloak-and-dagger stuff including a wonderful finale at a grand gothic, cliff-side mansion and an underground cavern. None of it is groundbreaking stuff, but it is very well-made and quite entertaining.