The Counterfeit Traitor

Eric Erickson is an oil trader and a Swedish citizen. His business with Germany puts him on the Allied blacklist. In exchange for having his name cleared, he agrees to work both sides: he tells the Nazis he is building a refinery in Sweden, which gets him into plants inside Germany, and passes what he sees to British intelligence. To make the part convincing he also has to accept being a friend of the Nazis in everyone's eyes, and his old friends stop greeting him in the street. George Seaton adapted the film from Alexander Klein's 1958 book, and it is based on a true story. William Holden stars. It presents espionage not as excitement but as work that isolates a man.