Berlin Express (1948)

You won't be disappointed!

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Despite finding Valley of Hell and Carnival of Sinners to be extraordinary films by his dad Maurice,I for some reason have never got round to seeing a title from Jacques Tourneur.Taking a look at the TV listings,I was pleased to find that the BBC were doing a Jacques Tourneur double bill,which led to me getting on the express.The plot:Going on the Express train to Berlin,the passengers find themselves having to mix with other reps of nations occupying Germany. Mistrusting him due to him never coming out of his carriage,the group are surprised to find out that potential peace maker Dr. Bernhardt.Despite their side having recently lost,a secret Nazi blows up Bernhardt's carriage. Pushing for answers, Robert Lindley,finds out that the man was an impostor,and that Bernhardt and his secretary Lucienne were pretending to be fellow passengers. Believing that he has escaped the Nazi assassins, Bernhardt crosses paths with old friend Walther,who reveals to Bernhardt that he has not gotten off the tracks.View on the film:For the opening 30 minutes,director Jacques Tourneur & cinematographer Lucien Ballard (aka:the-then Mr Merle Oberon ) intercut their moody Noir espionage with startling footage of Berlin's "Russia zone." Given the unique chance of being the first Hollywood production shot in post-war Germany and the first movie to be allowed to film in Russia's "zone" Tourneur sadly lets the chance slip out of frame.Going for a tell and show approach, Tourneur clips the Film Noir anxiety by layering Paul Stewart's narration on thick,which does not add a psychological depth to what is being shown,but just describes the images!Stopping the narration once everyone is gathered, Tourneur walks in the shadows of war-torn Berlin and Frankfurt ,casting the shadows from the destroyed buildings down on the group attempting to rid the final Nazi gasps. Dancing in the underworld of the cities in seedy nightclubs, Tourneur explores every corner with sharp tracking shoots that follow Walther sinking into the post-WWII darkness. Calling out a sincere message of unity and understanding between the occupying nations,the screenplay by Harold Medford and Curt Siodmak avoid the message becoming sickly sweet, by placing it in a gang on a mission Film Noir. Brilliantly expressing the abrasive relationship between the occupying nations allegorically on the train, the writers whip up a Film Noir storm,as Dr. Bernhardt starts to regret giving lifelong friend Walther his trust.Although carrying a poor French accent, Merle Oberon gives a sparkling performance as Lucienne,who is given an enticing flirting side by Oberon,which mask her quick-witted Femme Fatale skills.Joined by a superb support cast that include Charles McGraw and a worn-down Reinhold Schünzel as Walther, Robert Ryan gives a great, chiselled performance as Lindley. Initially being firm- handed with his opinions,Ryan wonderfully brings an ease to Lindley,as he realises that he has to work with others to keep the Berlin Express on track.

This film has shades of Hitchcock, there is even a mind reader act reminiscent to The 39 Steps and Mr Memory.This is an effective thriller with a semi documentary overtones and location shooting in a bombed out Frankfurt and Berlin after the war. Director Jacques Tourneur makes effective use of the locations but this is a somewhat muddled thriller.A train from Paris to Berlin has Robert Ryan playing an American agricultural expert, Robert Coote, a British teacher, Roman Toporow a Russian soldier and Charles Korvin, a French official.Merle Oberon is another French national who is accompanying German Paul Lukas who was a leader of the anti Hitler German underground and who has plans to present at a conference for German unification in the post war period.Lukas is also a marked man, an assassination attempt has gone wrong and he is later kidnapped. The others get together to find him.The film made in 1948 foreshadows the Cold War with distrust between the Russians and the Americans. The film gives thought that a divided Germany might not had been the best solution.

A very average film noir only made interesting as a piece of social history in its location filming around Berlin and Frankfurt. The documentary style voice over used a lot at the beginning of the filim I found irritating and the script and Miss Oberon's performance were poor. The rest of the leading players are average apart from the ever reliable Robert Coote playing his English toff. The images filmed in Germany were sobering to say the least. The portrayal of the distrust in Germans in 1948 and the scale of devastation of Berlin and Frankfurt compared to now was very quite shocking. My father was in Germany just after the war and was guarded when talking about his time there but was visibly upset when he talked about how tough it was just to exist in Germany at that time.

First-rate noir, one of many to unfold within the ominous mood of war-torn Europe (with the standard of such fare being set by next year's THE THIRD MAN). It is also one of several emanating from this era to follow a documentary-style pattern – which, however, renders it heavy-going in this case and is ultimately what dates it most of all. The title ranks it besides among a number of espionage thrillers set aboard a train; again, the template for these is THE LADY VANISHES (1938), with which this even shares one of its actors (Paul Lukas, still traveling incognito but now being the abducted party rather than the one doing the kidnapping!).Having mentioned Hitchcock's film, this is yet another effort by director Tourneur in that tradition (incidentally, he followed it with the recently-viewed CIRCLE OF DANGER [1951] and NIGHT OF THE DEMON [1957], co-scripted by Hitchcock regular Charles Bennett). In fact, the plot basically resolves itself in a handful of striking suspense sequences: an explosion in a train compartment; a kidnapping at a busy train station; a 39 STEPS-like 'memory test' in a club; a showdown in an abandoned brewery; and a near-strangling during yet another train journey ingeniously reflected in the glass of a parallel sleeping-car.The rest of the cosmopolitan cast includes American Robert Ryan (by now growing nicely as a leading man), 'French' Merle Oberon (amusingly, she confounds her fellow passengers by alternating between languages when they initially try 'hitting' on her; even if lovingly photographed by cinematographer husband Lucien Ballard, she is perhaps over-age to fill the romantic interest spot and is saddled throughout with a silly feathered hat!), Frenchman Charles Korvin (effectively emerging as the real villain of the piece), Briton Robert Coote (usually there to provide comic relief, he plays it reasonably straight in this case) and, in what constitutes a bit part (as a murder victim), German Fritz Kortner; conversely, future genre stalwart Charles McGraw's not negligible role as a high-ranking U.S. military officer is bafflingly unbilled!