Garbo: The Spy on AllMovie

Juan Pujol was called "Garbo" by British intelligence agents because they regarded him as "the greatest actor in the world." And perhaps he was -- he was good enough to persuade Nazi authorities that he was working for them even as he was serving the Allies at the same time, and received high decorations from both sides without either learning his true identity. Pujol was a Spaniard who was determined to work against the Axis during World War II, and provided German intelligence with information that he'd received through a network of 27 spies in Europe and the U.K. Of course, those spies never existed, the information he gave the Germans was largely false, and his insistence to the Germans that the Normandy landing was just a distraction helped make the successful D-Day campaign possible. However, while the Germans didn't know who Pujol was, neither did the British, and while he was reported dead in 1949, three decades later it was discovered that Pujol was alive and using another identity in South America. Filmmaker Edmon Roch uses interviews, newsreel footage, vintage photographs, clips from Hollywood espionage dramas and WWII propaganda films to tell the true story of one of the greatest and most elusive spies of his generation in Garbo: The Spy (aka Garbo: El Espia and Garbo: The Man Who Saved the World). The film was an official selection at the 2010 San Francisco Film Festival.