Berlin Express

Something of a curio. Jacques Tourneur, Robert Ryan and the authentic locations - Frankfurt, Berlin featuring post-war devastation - are all pluses as is the distinctive tones of Paul Stewart handling the narration but the similarities with Graham Greene's Stamboul Train and the thirties movie Rome Express tend to distract. The plot itself is vague where it should be clear just who is who and exactly why one or more whos want to eliminate another who. Paul Lukes, an excellent but grossly underused actor could phone this in while appearing in Broadway on Watch On The Rhine. Tourneur does his best to get a turgid script on its feet and keep it moving but it's a curio at best.

I always think that it is a good idea to make a thriller/ mystery story even when one is trying to show something that has nothing to do with that. In "The Berlin Express" we are shown post-war Germany, the consequences of 2nd World War. First the film can look as a triumphant look of the winner of the war towards the wreckage it left behind. Such sentences as "here justice arranged it so that the punishment were equal to the crime" (I'm not sure if the quote is correct, but the idea is) might corroborate that first impression. However it is possible that all is meant as great irony. The film is good. It isn't great though - just compare it with Reed's "The Third Man" and you'll see the difference between a master piece, a work of a superb team, and a reasonably well-made picture. However one mustn't forget that "reasonably well-made" pictures aren't so easy to do, and thus "The Berlin Express" seems to me to be a good movie.

With the second world war ending, already Germans envisioned a united country. A man of peace, Paul Lukas, travels back for a peace conference with this idea in mind. Trouble is that there is an absolute lunatic fringe who doesn't want this to occur and instead see a divided Germany as cause for discontent and eventual renewal of war against the allies. The usually benign Charles Korvin has a completely different role here. As Lukas's faithful secretary, Merle Oberon is anything but dominant in this 1948 film. The Russian officer in the film is stereotyped as being suspicious of anything western. The best part of the film is the ending where we see hope for friendship and understanding among the nations.

Robert Ryan gets on the train for Berlin and finds himself caught up in a world of bad international relationships, spying, kidnapping, and Merle Oberon in a hat with a big feather. The title suggests one of those train thrillers, and there's certain amount of that, but people look out the windows, and get out a couple of times, particularly when Paul Lukas is reported killed, or Miss Oberon is kidnapped. In the main, however, it turns into a message film: we must cooperate, we must have peace, or everything will wind up looking like the ruins of of Frankfurt and Berlin. There's some nice shots of the interior of the IG Farben offices in Frankfurt, with the paternoster elevators running. They're still there, and the building is part of the University of Frankfurt. With Robert Coote and Reinhold Schünzel.

In postwar Paris, a pigeon is shot by someone unknown. A housewife finds a secret German message on the bird. She brings it to the police and it rises up the chain of command. All the allies are notified but nobody is able to figure out the message. Meanwhile, various international passengers board a train to Frankfurt on their way to Berlin. Dr. Bernhardt is advocating for the peaceful reunification of his German homeland and gets blown up in his compartment. The passengers are brought to a US Army base for questioning. This is a stylized noir. The most striking aspect is the vista of the bombed out Germany. The main plot is akin to an international whodunnit and what did they do. It does get a bit random as the group search for Bernhardt in the ruins of the city. I don't see how they get anywhere as they randomly find a posting on a wall. They need to be following better clues. I do like some of comedy at the expense of the Russian. Mostly, it's a fine noir.

I've only seen this movie once but what differentiates it for me is not the story, the actors, or the director, but rather the footage of post WWII Frankfurt Germany and the devastation wrought by the war. In addition to the general post-war, pre-Cold War footage, the most fascinating thing is the film shot inside the I.G. Farben builting. This building is famous among architects and has a unique interior, shown in the film. This building was also the "Abrams Building" during the time the U.S. military occupied it during the Cold War and anyone who was in Frankfurt in the 1970's or 1980's might recognise it as unchanged inside from the time the movie was made to the time one served in the Army. This film is rare because that was a secure building during much of the Cold War. Today I believe the Army has left the building and it is occupied by a school or college. Lots of history in this movie. I wish it was available on DVD.