''Berlin Express'' is a 1948 American
drama film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...
starring
Robert Ryan
Robert Bushnell Ryan (November 11, 1909 – July 11, 1973) was an American actor and activist. Known for his portrayals of hardened cops and ruthless villains, Ryan performed for over three decades. He was nominated for the Academy Award for ...
,
Merle Oberon
Merle Oberon (born Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson; 19 February 191123 November 1979) was a British actress who began her film career in British films as Anne Boleyn in ''The Private Life of Henry VIII'' (1933). After her success in ''The Scarle ...
and
Paul Lukas
Paul Lukas (born Pál Lukács; 26 May 1894 – 15 August 1971) was a Hungarian actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for his performance in the film ''Watc ...
, and directed by
Jacques Tourneur
Jacques Tourneur (; November 12, 1904 – December 19, 1977) was a French film director known for the classic film noir ''Out of the Past'' and a series of low-budget horror films he made for RKO Studios, including ''Cat People (1942 film), Cat ...
.
Thrown together by chance, a group of people search a city for a kidnapped peace activist. Set in
Allied-occupied Germany
Germany was already de facto occupied by the Allies from the real fall of Nazi Germany in World War II on 8 May 1945 to the establishment of the East Germany on 7 October 1949. The Allies (United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and France ...
, it was shot on location in post-World War II
Frankfurt-am-Main
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian dialects, Hessian: , "Franks, Frank ford (crossing), ford on the Main (river), Main"), is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as o ...
(with exterior and interior shots of the
IG Farben Building
The IG Farben Building – also known as the Poelzig Building and the Abrams Building, formerly informally called The Pentagon of Europe – is a building complex in Frankfurt, Germany, which currently serves as the main structure of the West ...
and its
paternoster elevator
A paternoster (, , or ) or paternoster lift is a passenger elevator which consists of a chain of open compartments (each usually designed for two people) that move slowly in a loop up and down inside a building without stopping. Passengers ca ...
s) and
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
. During the opening credits, a full-screen notice reads, "Actual scenes in Frankfurt and Berlin were photographed by authorisation of the United States Army of Occupation, the British Army of Occupation, the Soviet Army of Occupation."
Plot
Various people board a U.S. Army train, the Main Seiner, to Frankfurt.
Dr. Bernhardt tries to become better acquainted with the other passengers, but they all rebuff his overtures because he is a German. When Sterling realises who he is, this immediately changes the atmosphere. After retiring to his compartment, Bernhardt is killed by a bomb. While the others are questioned at the next stop, Frankfurt, they learn that the dead man was actually one of the doctor's bodyguards. Bernhardt had been posing as another passenger, and Lucienne is his secretary.
Bernhardt's deception does not last long. He is kidnapped from the busy train station in broad daylight after he greets Walther, an old, trusted friend. The U.S. Army quickly institutes a search of the city, but when Lucienne begs her fellow travelers to help look for Bernhardt, they at first all decline. One by one, however, they change their minds.
Lucienne suggests they go see Walther, unaware that he has betrayed Bernhardt in return for his missing wife's location. When they get there, they discover only Walther's body, as he has hanged himself after discovering his wife was dead all along.
The group splits up to cover the city. Lindley accompanies Lucienne to various illegal nightclubs. At the last one, Lindley notices a woman smoking an unusually long cigarette, just like the ones Bernhardt likes. He picks up a discarded butt and shows Lucienne that it has a "B" monogram on it. When the woman turns out to be an entertainer, pretending to know the answers of questions posed by the customers, Lindley asks her where Bernhardt is. Her clown assistant impedes Lindley, allowing her to get away. When Lindley and Lucienne question Sergeant Barnes, the American soldier who was sitting with the woman beforehand, he reluctantly agrees to lead them to where she lives.
When they get to an abandoned brewery, Barnes turns out to be working with the kidnappers. Now all three are prisoners. However, an undercover agent had knocked out the clown and taken his place, accompanying the others to the hideout. He is shot when the real clown shows up, but manages to get back to the nightclub and inform the authorities where Bernhardt is being held. American soldiers break in just as Bernhardt and Lucienne are about to be shot and free the three unharmed. Kessler, the ringleader, is killed by Perrot, who turns out to be Bernhardt's would-be assassin.
The passengers board the connecting Berliner 2 train for Berlin. Perrot suggests that each of them take a turn guarding Bernhardt in his compartment. Lindley pieces together various lies Perrot had told and recalls that he knew that the bomb was made from a grenade. The others dismiss his suspicions, but Lindley sees Perrot strangling Bernhardt in the reflection from a passing train and saves the doctor's life. Perrot is shot dead as he tries to flee.
Cast
*
Merle Oberon
Merle Oberon (born Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson; 19 February 191123 November 1979) was a British actress who began her film career in British films as Anne Boleyn in ''The Private Life of Henry VIII'' (1933). After her success in ''The Scarle ...
as Lucienne
*
Robert Ryan
Robert Bushnell Ryan (November 11, 1909 – July 11, 1973) was an American actor and activist. Known for his portrayals of hardened cops and ruthless villains, Ryan performed for over three decades. He was nominated for the Academy Award for ...
as Robert Lindley
*
Charles Korvin
Charles Korvin (born Géza Kárpáthi, November 21, 1907 – June 18, 1998) was a Hungarian-American film, television and stage actor. He was also a professional still and motion picture photographer and a master chef.
Korvin was born in PÃ ...
as Perrot
*
Paul Lukas
Paul Lukas (born Pál Lukács; 26 May 1894 – 15 August 1971) was a Hungarian actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for his performance in the film ''Watc ...
as Dr. Bernhardt
*
Robert Coote
Robert Coote (4 February 1909 – 26 November 1982) was an English actor. He played aristocrats or British military types in many films, and created the role of Colonel Hugh Pickering in the long-running original Broadway production of ''My Fai ...
as Sterling
*
Reinhold Schünzel
Reinhold Schünzel (7 November 1888 – 11 November 1954) was a German actor and director, active in both Germany and the United States. The son of a German father and a Jewish mother, he was born in St. Pauli, the poorest part of Hamburg. Despite ...
as Walther
* Roman Toporow as Lt. Maxim
* Peter von Zerneck as Hans Schmidt
*
Otto Waldis
Otto Waldis (born Otto Glucksmann-Blum, May 20, 1901 – March 25, 1974) was an Austrian-American character actor in films and television from the 1930s through the 1960s. He was also billed as Otto Blum.
Years in Germany
Waldis was born Otto ...
as Kessler
*
Fritz Kortner
Fritz Kortner (born Fritz Nathan Kohn; 12 May 1892 – 22 July 1970) was an Austrian stage and film actor and theatre director.
Life and career
Kortner was born in Vienna as Fritz Nathan Kohn into a Jewish family. He studied at the Vienna A ...
as Franzen
* Michael Harvey as Sgt. Barnes
*
Tom Keene as Major
*
Charles McGraw
Charles McGraw (born Charles Crisp Butters; May 10, 1914 – July 29, 1980) was an American stage, film and television actor whose career spanned more than three decades.
Early life
McGraw was born to Beatrice (née Crisp) and Francis P. B ...
as USFET Col. Johns
* Marle Hayden as Maja the Mind Reader
*
Paul Stewart as Narrator (uncredited)
Production
According to
Eddie Muller
Eddie Muller (born October 15, 1958) is an American writer based in San Francisco. He is known for writing books about movies, particularly film noir, and is the host of Noir Alley on Turner Classic Movies (TCM).
Early life and education
Muller ...
, a
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie channel, movie-oriented pay television, pay-TV television network, network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasti ...
host, Merle Oberon insisted on
Lucien Ballard
Lucien Ballard, A.S.C. (May 6, 1908 – October 1, 1988) was an American cinematographer. He worked on more than 130 films during his 50-year career, collaborating multiple times with directors including Josef von Sternberg, John Brahm, Henry H ...
, her husband, being the cinematographer because he had developed techniques to hide the scars she had as a result of a car accident.
Muller also noted that this was the first Hollywood production filmed on location in post-war Berlin, beating out ''
A Foreign Affair
''A Foreign Affair'' is a 1948 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich, and John Lund. The screenplay by Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Richard L. Breen is based on a story by David ...
''.
Reception
The staff at ''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' magazine gave the film a positive review, and wrote, "
he mst striking feature of this production is its extraordinary background of war-ravaged Germany. With a documentary eye, this film etches a powerfully grim picture of life amidst the shambles. It makes awesome and exciting cinema...Ryan establishes himself as a first-rate actor in this film, demonstrating conclusively that his brilliant performance in ''
Crossfire
A crossfire (also known as interlocking fire) is a military term for the siting of weapons (often automatic weapons such as assault rifles or sub-machine guns) so that their arcs of fire overlap. This tactic came to prominence in World War I.
...
'' was no one-shot affair." ''Variety'', however, did criticize the screenplay for "its failure to break away from the formula of anti-Nazi films."
''The New York Times'' had a similar response, stating the film's photography of the post-war landscape creates a "realistic, awesome and impressive vista". After lukewarm praise for the film's plot, the reviewer continues, "...it is the panoramic and close views of life amid the 'new architecture' of Frankfort and Berlin — 'early Twentieth Century modern warfare' architecture — which gives the adventure the authentic impact of a documentary."
Harold Medford was nominated for the
Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America is the joint efforts of two different US labor unions representing TV and film writers:
* The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), headquartered in New York City and affiliated with the AFL–CIO
* The Writers Guil ...
Award for the Screen, Best Written American Drama, 1949.
References
External links
*
*
*
*
*
*
{{Curt Siodmak
1948 films
1940s thriller drama films
American thriller drama films
American black-and-white films
1940s English-language films
Film noir
Films directed by Jacques Tourneur
Films scored by Friedrich Hollaender
Films set in France
Films set in Frankfurt
Films set in Germany
Films set in Paris
Rail transport films
RKO Pictures films
1948 drama films
1940s American films