''Subway in the Sky'' is a 1959 British

crime film Crime films, in the broadest sense, is a film genre inspired by and analogous to the crime fiction literary genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and its detection. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine ...

directed by

Muriel Box Violette Muriel Box, Baroness Gardiner, (22 September 1905 – 18 May 1991) was an English screenwriter and director, Britain's most prolific female director, having directed 12 feature films and one featurette. Her screenplay for ''The Seventh ...

and starring

Van Johnson Charles Van Dell Johnson (August 25, 1916 – December 12, 2008) was an American film, television, theatre and radio actor. He was a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during and after World War II. Johnson was described as the embodiment o ...

Hildegard Knef Hildegard Frieda Albertine Knef (; 28 December 19251 February 2002) was a German actress, voice actress, singer, and writer. She was billed in some English-language films as Hildegard Neff or Hildegarde Neff. Early years Hildegard Knef was born ...

and

Albert Lieven Albert Lieven (born Albert Fritz Liévin; 22 June 1906 – 22 December 1971) was a German actor. Early life Lieven was born in Hohenstein, East Prussia (Olszynek, Poland). His father was the head physician of the Tuberculosis sanatorium H ...

. Hildegard Knef, who changed career in the 1960s to become a cabaret singer and songwriter, sings one song in the film, "It Isn't Love." It was shot at

Shepperton Studios Shepperton Studios is a film studio located in Shepperton, Surrey, England, with a history dating back to 1931. It is now part of the Pinewood Studios Group. During its early existence, the studio was branded as Sound City (not to be confused w ...

near

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. The film's sets were designed by the

art director Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film industry, film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and ...

George Provis George Provis (1901–1989) was a British art director who worked on over a hundred films during a lengthy career. He began his career working on quota quickies during the 1930s. After the Second World War, Provis was appointed by Sydney Box to h ...

Plot

Baxter Grant, an American soldier in

West Berlin West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...

, deserts and goes on the run when faced with false drug trafficking and murder charges. He takes shelter with cabaret singer Lilli Hoffman, who he manages to persuade to help prove his innocence.

Cast

as Major Baxter Grant *

as Lilli Hoffman *

as Carl *

Cec Linder Cecil Yekuthial Linder (March 10, 1921 – April 10, 1992) was a Polish-born Canadian film and television actor. He was Jewish and managed to escape Poland before the Holocaust. In the 1950s and 1960s, he worked extensively in the United Kingdom, ...

as Carson *

Katherine Kath Katherine Kath (born Rose Marie Lily Faess; 11 August 1920 – 17 November 2012) was a French prima ballerina at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, who became an actress after suffering from an injury which destroyed her chances of continuing he ...

as Anna Grant *

Vivian Matalon Vivian Matalon (11 October 1929 – 15 August 2018) was a British theatre director. Born in Manchester, Matalon began his career as an actor in a series of forgettable British films, but his greatest success has been as a director of West End, ...

as Stefan Grant *

Carl Jaffe Carl Jaffe (21 March 1902 – 12 April 1974) was a German actor. Jaffe trained on the stage in his native Hamburg, Kassel and Wiesbaden before moving to Berlin, where his career began to develop. In 1933 Jaffe changed his stage name to Fran ...

as German Detective * Chuck Keyser as Sergeant Harwell * Gaylord Cavallaro as Switchboard Operator * Michael Bell as G.I. * E. Kerrigan Prescott as Sentry * James Maxwell as Officer * Gerda Larsen as Air Stewardess * Tom Watson as Corporal *

Edward Judd Edward Judd (4 October 1932 – 24 February 2009) was a British actor. Biography Born in Shanghai, he and his English father and Russian mother fled when the Japanese attacked China five years later. His career was at its peak in the 1960s ...

as Molloy *

Brian Wilde Brian George Wilde (13 June 1927 – 20 March 2008) was an English actor, best known for his roles in television comedy, most notably Mr Barrowclough in '' Porridge'' and Walter "Foggy" Dewhurst in ''Last of the Summer Wine''. His lugubrious ...

as Military Policeman

Critical reception

Leonard Maltin Leonard Michael Maltin (born December 18, 1950) is an American film critic and film historian, as well as an author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives. He is perhaps best known for his book of fil ...

gave the film one and a half out of four stars, calling it a "flabby caper," regarding it a "terrible waste of (Hildegard) Neff's talents".

Tony Sloman Anthony B. Sloman (born 6 May 1945 in Waltham Abbey, Essex) is an English film producer and screenwriter. Tony Sloman is a cinema critic and historian, whose long career has encompassed many facets of film making. He has worked intermittently ...

gave it three out of five stars in the ''

Radio Times ''Radio Times'' (currently styled as ''RadioTimes'') is a British weekly listings magazine devoted to television and radio programme schedules, with other features such as interviews, film reviews and lifestyle items. Founded in May 1923 by J ...

'', calling it, "a film that wasn't highly regarded on its release, but thanks to its cast, subject matter and director bears re-evaluation today. (It) features two particularly watchable stars, both of whom have done better work than this. Ageing bobby-sox idol Van Johnson is a better actor than is generally acknowledged; he had a propensity for worried, introverted heroes...The director is Muriel Box, one of the few English women directors to have had a successful screen career, though here she struggles to keep the stage origins of the material hidden. Wilkie Cooper's stark black-and-white photography is excellent."

References

External links

* 1959 films 1959 crime films Films directed by Muriel Box Films set in Berlin Films produced by Sydney Box Films scored by Mario Nascimbene British crime films 1950s English-language films 1950s British films Films shot at Shepperton Studios British Lion Films films {{1950s-UK-film-stub