Directed by Aviva Kempner
Edited by Barbara Ballow
Running time: 1 hour and 41 minutes

by Fiona Underhill

Like the recent Merce Cunningham documentary If the Dancer Dances, The Spy Behind Home Plate is directed, produced and edited by women. Female documentary-makers taking on male subject matters is a fascinating perspective and one we will hopefully see more of. This documentary doesn’t particularly break new ground in terms of format, as it is a mixture of talking heads and mostly still images from the archives. The problem with making a documentary about a historical figure in the pre-television age is that there are hardly any moving images of them, making it harder for the subject to come ‘alive’ for an audience. Moe Berg is someone who lived five lifetimes within one. He had his academic and law careers, his baseball career, and then his ‘spy’ career. Due to this, the documentary is absolutely packed full of information and it is slightly overwhelming, trying to keep up with the pace of it all. Editor Barbara Ballow must have had to sift through an unbelievable amount of material in piecing this together and mostly does a good job, but it is a barrage of facts which requires concentration.