It's 1947. Frankfort. The Nazi underground is trying to destroy the man, Paul Lukas, who can pull the separate parts of post-war Berlin together. That gang of thugs will stop at nothing.
(Kids, maybe I should explain. When I used the term "post-war" before, I meant to refer to a conflict we called World War Two, or sometimes WWII. The war was just terrible. There were more deaths than in "A Nightmare on Elm Street." Frankfort is in Germany, not, as you might think, Kentucky. Germany fought on the losing side in the previously mentioned "WWII." Germany, including Frankfort (Germany, not Kentucky) was in ruins that were even worse than those in the seedier parts of your own suburb. You couldn't find a J. Crew store for miles.)
Anyway, Paul Lukas, who is going to unite Germany, is headed for Berlin on the train, accompanied by his secretary, the exotic-looking Merle Oberon. The pair meet four men who will represent the four sectors into which Berlin is divided. Robert Ryan is the American; Charles Korvin is the Frenchman who turns out to be a fake; Robert Coote is the proper Englishman; Roman Toporow is the distant, humorless, dilatory Russian.
Here's the plot. Lukas is kidnapped by the Nazi underground when the train stops in Frankfurt (Germany) who want to prevent him from unifying Berlin (also Germany) so that its four occupation forces will fight among themselves and let the Nazis take over again. Something like that. Oberon, Ryan, Korvin, Coote, and Toporow miss the next train to Berlin in order to throw together in an attempt to find and rescue Lukas from certain death. The detective work takes them through some louche places you wouldn't ordinarily want to go.
Do the good guys manage to rescue Lukas? Are you kidding? Not only do they save him from the river, they uncover Korvin's real identity when they find him trying to strangle Lukas after he has apparently been saved.
This isn't a movie of any complexity. The good guys are good; the bad guys are bad. They're the kind of bad guys who sacrifice one of their own in order to avoid suspicion themselves. Now that's really rotten.
The only role that is at all complex -- "ambiguous" would be a better description -- is that of the Russian soldier played by Roman Toporow. He's not a stereotype, exactly. He's young, handsome, well spoken, and expressionless, rather than old, bald, snarling, and sneering.
The writers had to be careful with Toporow's character because 1947 was rather a tricky years on the international stage. The West was transitioning between enemies, from the hated and now-subjugated Germans to the emerging adversaries in the Soviet Union. But the mutual hatred hadn't yet been set in cement. In 1947 nobody could foresee the Berlin Wall or the Cuban Missile Crisis or anything of that magnitude, so Toporow is the least featured of the pursuers. We don't get to know much about him except that he never smiles. And when the pursuers burst into a room and find the dead body of a friendly figure, Toporow is not in the shot, so he doesn't get a chance to express sorrow like everyone else. But he does smile and wave good-bye at the end. Well, he more or less had to. Two or three years earlier the Soviet Union had been our allies in the war against Germany and things could have gone either way in 1947.
It's directed by Jacques Tourneur, who had done some splendid work for Val Lewton's production unit at RKO, but you wouldn't know it from this movie, which is routine in almost its every element. If the writer had changed the underground Nazis into American gangsters and Paul Lukas into the newly arriving reform Chief of Police, this could easily have been an inexpensive B feature.
But don't get me wrong. I enjoyed it. The tight plot, the educational location shooting, the informative quality of the script, and the Weltschmerz-laden narration by Paul Stewart ("Berlin -- the punishment fit the crime.") lift it above average.
(Kids, maybe I should explain. When I used the term "post-war" before, I meant to refer to a conflict we called World War Two, or sometimes WWII. The war was just terrible. There were more deaths than in "A Nightmare on Elm Street." Frankfort is in Germany, not, as you might think, Kentucky. Germany fought on the losing side in the previously mentioned "WWII." Germany, including Frankfort (Germany, not Kentucky) was in ruins that were even worse than those in the seedier parts of your own suburb. You couldn't find a J. Crew store for miles.)
Anyway, Paul Lukas, who is going to unite Germany, is headed for Berlin on the train, accompanied by his secretary, the exotic-looking Merle Oberon. The pair meet four men who will represent the four sectors into which Berlin is divided. Robert Ryan is the American; Charles Korvin is the Frenchman who turns out to be a fake; Robert Coote is the proper Englishman; Roman Toporow is the distant, humorless, dilatory Russian.
Here's the plot. Lukas is kidnapped by the Nazi underground when the train stops in Frankfurt (Germany) who want to prevent him from unifying Berlin (also Germany) so that its four occupation forces will fight among themselves and let the Nazis take over again. Something like that. Oberon, Ryan, Korvin, Coote, and Toporow miss the next train to Berlin in order to throw together in an attempt to find and rescue Lukas from certain death. The detective work takes them through some louche places you wouldn't ordinarily want to go.
Do the good guys manage to rescue Lukas? Are you kidding? Not only do they save him from the river, they uncover Korvin's real identity when they find him trying to strangle Lukas after he has apparently been saved.
This isn't a movie of any complexity. The good guys are good; the bad guys are bad. They're the kind of bad guys who sacrifice one of their own in order to avoid suspicion themselves. Now that's really rotten.
The only role that is at all complex -- "ambiguous" would be a better description -- is that of the Russian soldier played by Roman Toporow. He's not a stereotype, exactly. He's young, handsome, well spoken, and expressionless, rather than old, bald, snarling, and sneering.
The writers had to be careful with Toporow's character because 1947 was rather a tricky years on the international stage. The West was transitioning between enemies, from the hated and now-subjugated Germans to the emerging adversaries in the Soviet Union. But the mutual hatred hadn't yet been set in cement. In 1947 nobody could foresee the Berlin Wall or the Cuban Missile Crisis or anything of that magnitude, so Toporow is the least featured of the pursuers. We don't get to know much about him except that he never smiles. And when the pursuers burst into a room and find the dead body of a friendly figure, Toporow is not in the shot, so he doesn't get a chance to express sorrow like everyone else. But he does smile and wave good-bye at the end. Well, he more or less had to. Two or three years earlier the Soviet Union had been our allies in the war against Germany and things could have gone either way in 1947.
It's directed by Jacques Tourneur, who had done some splendid work for Val Lewton's production unit at RKO, but you wouldn't know it from this movie, which is routine in almost its every element. If the writer had changed the underground Nazis into American gangsters and Paul Lukas into the newly arriving reform Chief of Police, this could easily have been an inexpensive B feature.
But don't get me wrong. I enjoyed it. The tight plot, the educational location shooting, the informative quality of the script, and the Weltschmerz-laden narration by Paul Stewart ("Berlin -- the punishment fit the crime.") lift it above average.