Sat 8 May 2010
Movie Review: BERLIN EXPRESS (1948).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Suspense & espionage films[3] Comments
BERLIN EXPRESS. RKO Radio Pictures, 1948. Merle Oberon, Robert Ryan, Charles Korvin, Paul Lukas, Robert Coote, Reinhold Schunzel, Roman Toporow. Screenplay: Harold Medford, based on a story by Curt Siodmak. Director: Jacques Tourneur.
The reason for watching this one, or mine at least, was the promise of a movie with a train ride, always an exciting prospect.
This one I found disappointing, though, as the people making this film had other goals in mind. The fact that the first third, perhaps, takes place on a train (from Paris to post-war Frankfurt) and then again for about five minutes toward the end (bombed-out Frankfurt to an equally bombed-out Berlin) is almost incidental.
Filmed on location, the actual aims of this film are, first of all, to show the devastation caused by Allied bombers during the war, as a cautionary measure, perhaps; then secondly but foremost to make a call for peace between the four nation occupiers of both the city of Berlin and the state of Germany. One can only rue the fact that such a wish was not to be, and not even a movie with the best of intentions could sway the day, politically speaking.
But with World War II so long behind us, this film, when watched today, is a reminder that the occupation of Germany was not so easy as several pages in a history textbook might have you believe. (In my own experience with grade school and high school history classes, we never even made it to World War II, but perhaps students are better served today.) Survivors of the war and the earth-pounding air raids may not all have been Nazis, but neither were they occupied easily.
Sorry. Didn’t mean to get all preachy on us, but rather than a top notch spy thriller, the essence of this film is rather a post-war cinematic plea for peace. Paul Lukas plays a man (German) heading for such a conference (in Berlin) with precisely such a plan, and he is nearly assassinated (on the train) for his efforts.
In the middle of the movie, he is kidnapped (in Frankfurt) and must be rescued, successfully so, thanks to a four man effort headed by Robert Ryan’s character, who’s an American, with the assistance of an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Russian, the latter reluctantly but in the end quite capably. (There are some twists in the tale, but those I won’t tell.)
But perhaps you see what I mean about the moral of the tale. Merle Oberon plays Lukas’s secretary assistant equally capably, but with no particular verve or elan.
The photography, in black and white, is very ably done, and in fact even better than that, with lots of camera angles and striking set designs, but overall, while I stand the chance of being corrected, today this film is no more than a minor relic of the past.
The train ride, while not essential to the plot, is nice while it lasts, though!
PostScript. The movie’s been hard to find, or so I’ve been told, but it’s been recently released by the Warner Brothers Archive and is available through them, Amazon, and all of the usual outlets.
May 8th, 2010 at 3:46 am
The rather ironic post war message of universal brotherhood and cooperation just seems like a dream today in light of the Cold War already developing as the Second World War ended. And as you say, the train journey doesn’t really add up to much. Considering the setting, cast, and director as well as the screenwriter a major disappointment.
For a handful of films more honest about this period try Carol Reed’s THE MAN BETWEEN, Nunnally Johnson’s under rated NIGHT PEOPLE with Gregory Peck and Buddy Ebsen (particularly good as a conniving sergeant), Billy Wilder’s antic ONE TWO THREE and earlier FOREIGN AFFAIR (with congresswoman Jean Arthur getting involved with a plot to capture Marlene Dietrich’s Nazi husband), the earnest THE BIG LIFT, and the British film DESPERATE MOMENT with Dirk Bogarde (based on Martha Albrand’s novel), all a good deal more jaundiced than this somewhat naive plea for good will over political reality.
A PRIZE OF GOLD and TOWN WITHOUT PITY are both somewhat more honest about the post war occupation of Germany. Sam Fuller’s VERBOTEN! is even darker. Gene Kelly has a good one in THE DEVIL MAKES THREE about a GI returning to Frankfurt to thank the family who helped him.
For better spies on a train from this era try either Henry Hathaway’s DIPLOMATIC COURIER or George Sherman’s SPY HUNT based on books by Peter Cheyney and Victor Canning respectively. Either of them provide more and better thrills than the tame BERLIN EXPRESS.
DIPLOMATIC COURIER is in technicolor to boot taking place at least partially on the Orient Express and boasts a cast including Tyrone Power, Patrica Neal, Hildegarde Neff, Karl Malden, Stephen McNally, Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, and Michael Ansara and based on Cheyney’s novel SINISTER ERRAND. It won’t disappoint you, nor will SPY HUNT based on Canning’s PANTHER’S MOON with Howard Duff, Marta Toren, Robert Douglas, and Walter Slezak on the Simplon-Orient Express with a pair of killer black leopards — one of which has microfilm in its collar — and then the train wrecks in a remote area of the Alps …
Either one is everything you want from this sort of film, and everything BERLIN EXPRESS isn’t.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:24 am
Yeah, there’s a few nice moments in it, but as Dave says, rather a disappointment
July 19th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
I watched DIPLOMATIC COURIER for the first time last night and enjoyed it very much. Definitely recommended.
Thought I would also add a note that it was shot in black and white (not Technicolor) by Lucien Ballard.
Best wishes,
Laura