Berlin Express

Plot synopsis:
Various people board a U.S. Army train to Berlin:
Frenchwoman Lucienne (Merle Oberon)
American agricultural expert Robert Lindley (Robert Ryan)
Dr. Bernhardt (Paul Lukas), a renowned German activist working for peace and the reunification of his country
Frenchman Perrot (Charles Korvin)
British teacher Sterling (Robert Coote)
Soviet Lieutenant Maxim (Roman Toporow), and
German businessman Otto Franzen (Fritz Kortner)
Dr. Bernhardt tries to become better acquainted with the other passengers, but they all rebuff his overtures because he is a German until Sterling realises who he is, which immediately changes the atmosphere. When he retires to his compartment, he 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 enemies are not foiled for long. He is kidnapped from the busy train station in broad daylight after he greets Walther (Reinhold Schünzel), 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 (as they know what he looks like), 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. He hanged himself after the kidnappers revealed his wife has been dead all along.
The group then splits up to cover the city, with Lindley accompanying 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 (Michael Harvey), the American soldier who was sitting with the woman beforehand, he reluctantly agrees to lead them to where she lives.
It is a trap, however. When they get to an abandoned brewery, Barnes turns out to be working with the kidnappers. Now all three are prisoners. Fortunately, 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 (Otto Waldis), the ringleader, is killed by Perrot, who turns out to be Bernhardt's would-be assassin.
The passengers reboard the train. Perrot suggests that each of them take a turn guarding Bernhardt in his compartment, with him going first. Afterward, Lindley pieces together various lies Perrot had told and recalls that he knew that the bomb was made from a grenade, but the others dismiss his suspicions. Luckily, he 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.

Tags: murder

Review:
There was a good mix of characters, but the real star of the film is the location:  there are wonderful shots of Berlin and Frankfurt right after the war, and the devastation around the characters adds a powerful unspoken dimension to the film.For anyone who enjoyed this movie, I would also highly recommend "Decision Before Dawn," also filmed on location in postwar Europe, which starred Richard Basehart, Oskar Werner and a whole host of other fabulous character actors, including Hildegard Kneff.It is irksome, but neither Berlin Express nor Decision Before Dawn seem to be available on Video or DVD, which is a real shame.
I think that having help from the Russians, French and British is interesting, but highly improbable and seemed like a bit of a cliché, but nevertheless it's a great film and well wroth seeing..
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.
On a surface level this is a kind of benevolent THIRD MAN, as a group of international comrades, most prominently a naive American, try to root out sinister Germans and a betraying friend in the rubbles of post-war Europe.
The script is a model of civic decency, as it dramatises the lingering dangers facing Europe after the war, but offering a narrative of co-operation and hope.Director Tourneur, however, had only just directed the beautifully bleak OUT OF THE PAST, and this film is full of a blackness overwhelming good intentions, where the frightening contingencies of history and inexplicable darkness of man are not so easily swept aside.
Set in a post WW-2 Germany, "Berlin Express" is a quite interesting thriller directed by Jacques Tourneur.
The story is basically about a group of people each of whom representing Russian, French, American and British forces who are united in trying to solve an assassination attempt made by Nazi underground group on a Professor Bernhardt, one of the  former liders of German Resistance to Nazis and now a chairman of a commission for post-war unification of Germany."Berlin Express" is particularly interesting for it's exteriors shot in 1947 on real locations with special permission from Allied forces, showing destroyed by bombings Frankfurt and Berlin.
BERLIN EXPRESS also explores the unusual brief reality of Nazi resistance to the US victory over Germany, and offers some really intriguing plot devices (a clown in a cabaret) some identity swapping and a fantastic shootout in a ruined brewery.
But of course, there are sinister forces at work to prevent him from arriving.Bernhardt's secretary, Lucienne (Oberon) is on a train with her boss and several good-looking male passengers who represent the four Allied powers.
Bits of humor lighten up a taut, well-written script.What makes this film better than dreck like SPY TRAIN is its sense of reality, which is cemented by good characters and embellished by the very real locations.
Berlin Express (1948)Just after WWII has ended comes this film about getting inside the post-Nazi world for an assassination.
It's filmed with remarkable realism in post-war German (Frankfurt and Berlin), with trains and train stations and lots of darkness and steam and drama.
The only real reason to watch this film is for the location work in Frankfurt and Berlin which really shows the results of the allied bombing in WW2.
"Berlin Express" (1948) is directed by Jacques Tourneur, who not only made the classic horror films "Cat People" (1942) and "I Walk with a Zombie" (1943), amongst others, under Val Lewton, he made the absolutely unbeatable film noir "Out of the Past" (1947).
It stars Robert Ryan, always good value, along with Merle Oberon and Paul Lukas.The screenplay was written by Curt Siodmak (an intriguing, if patchy, director in his own right) and Harold Medford and concerns a multinational group of train passengers (American, French, English and Russian) who become involved in a post-World War II Nazi assassination plot of a prominent peace activist.The photography by Lucien Ballard is very good and its trump card: the movie was shot on location in Berlin and Frankfurt-am-Main, so this is real post-war devastation you're seeing.
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.
BERLIN EXPRESS is a post-war thriller directed to the hilt by Jacques Tourneur, who adds plenty of icy atmosphere to the production.
It also has one of the best locations I've seen in a film: the real-life bombed-out ruins of Frankfurt, which provide a fitting backdrop to a tale of intrigue, scandal, and murder.Much of the film is set on a train, as various characters interact and attempt to do battle with some Nazis who don't let the small matter of losing the war stop them.
When a leading scientist is kidnapped, it takes an American investigator to track down the criminal gang and exact some justice.Cast-wise, this is a film that benefits from some seasoned performers like Robert Ryan and Paul Lukas in key roles, but really it's a story where the cinematography wins out.
That's the way "Berlin Express" begins, and matters become curiouser from there on.On arrival at a Berlin train station a kidnapping takes place, and the principal characters - American, English, Russian, German and French - decide to form an ad hoc posse and try to find the missing German humanitarian who is an important person enroute to an important conference (wouldn't be much point if there were no important aspects involved).
But there are actual scenes of bomb-scarred Berlin and Frankfurt taken just after the war which add authenticity to the film, and with an excellent storyline and direction by Jacques Tourneur the movie can stand on its own as a quintessential spy picture..
The last lines of the movie leave a bitter taste in the mouth and the pacifist's dream has not yet come true."Berlin express" is a travel trough a wasted land ;the thriller side (whodunit:and there are clues to find the killer) takes a beck seat to the depiction of the ruins the madness of a FÜhrer has left behind .Attention to detail is remarkable:the cigarette falling on the ground in the station,for instance.And Tourneur is part of the directors who can make the best of a banal place :a nightclub ,a clown and a false medium can be as disturbing as a train belting along in the night (see the moor in " circle of danger" , the children's party in "curse of the Demon ",the pool in "cat people" )..
Robert Ryan, Merle Oberon, Robert Coote Paul Lukas and Charles Korvin are on the "Berlin Express," a 1948 Jacques Tourneur film about a multinational group headed for a conference in postwar Germany.
In the film, Ryan is an agricultural expert from America, Robert Coote is a schoolteacher from England, Merle Oberon is a French national accompanying an important German, played by Paul Lukas.
The group on the train bands together to find him and also to clear themselves.This is a good film, historically significant, as it was the first Hollywood production made in post-war Germany and also because it shows the devastation in Germany as a result of all of the bombings.
In this film, four people of different nationalities band together in post-War Europe to rescue a kidnapped German statesman from the Nazi underground.
The picture has the distinction of being the first American film to be shot in post-War Europe (yes, even before that same year's "A Foreign Affair"), and the background locations of bombed-out Frankfurt and Berlin are pretty spectacular in their lunar bleakness.
There is an Attempt to try and Pose this Thriller in the Bombed-Out Remains of Germany and it is Very Effective in its use of Real On Location Footage.It can be a Heavy Handed Affair at times with its Didactic Narration and Muddled Script.
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!.
Jacques Tourneur directed the film - the man behind "Cat People", "I Walked with a Zombie" and "Out of the Past" - all excellent films that I love."Berlin Express" was sadly disappointing to see.
BERLIN EXPRESS loses a lot of steam with a start full of exposition and dry, fact-filled narrative to explain the existing situation in post-war Germany.
The narrator aptly describes it as "a world of rubble under strict military control." The footage of a devastated Frankfurt and Berlin give an authentic feel to the story, which is a bit muddled at times due to script problems in trying to cover too much history.Among the international train passengers are MERLE OBERON, ROBERT RYAN, CHARLES KORVIN and PAUL LUKAS, all of whom become involved in the hunt for a kidnapped politician after a murder all of them have witnessed aboard the train.
Fresh from the acclaim he got for Out of the Past, director Jacques Tourneur went to Europe with his cast and crew and became the first film maker from the west to do a movie in occupied Germany.
It's a good noir thriller, but it is also a plea for unity and understanding among nations, specifically those who were occupying Germany at that time.It's quite a little United Nations on a train from Paris to Berlin with Robert Ryan American agricultural expert, Robert Coote British school teacher, Roman Toporow Russian soldier, Charles Korvin French bon vivant and Merle Oberon another French national with a German VIP Paul Lukas.Lukas is quite a VIP indeed, he's the prototype for Konrad Adenauer an anti-Nazi leader who is going to a conference to present a plan for a reunified Germany.
The Russians took about a third of the country and formed the German Democratic Republic and thus Germany was divided for about 40 years.I do believe Lukas is right at times when he says man might only unite if aliens invade the earth.
It's such a laborious shot that it makes you think the movie is going to settle down to being a mystery on a train like The Lady Vanishes, or Murder on the Orient Express.
It was made by a terrific cosmopolitan group - a gifted French/American director, a great German writer (Curt Siodmak, who, along with his brother Robert, made some of the best films of the forties) and a fine international cast.
The humane Dr. Bernhardt, a German who opposed Hitler and survived, is on a mission from Paris to Berlin by train to address an international conference on his plans for a unified and democratic Germany.
The Nazi underground is trying to destroy the man, Paul Lukas, who can pull the separate parts of post-war Berlin together.
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.
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.
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.
Little did she realize the pigeon was carrying a coded message that will set things in motion in this account of life in that era.The Americans in France were sending a group of people to Berlin by train.
What follows is an adventure into uncharted territory that takes place among the ruins of Frankfurt and Berlin.Jacques Tourneur, a director with a talent for giving his films a view from another angle, worked successfully in Hollywood.
Lucien Ballard, a distinguished cinematographer was at hand to capture images that illustrates the horrors lived during the war.The cast includes Robert Ryan, Merle Oberon, Paul Lukas, Charles Korvin and Robert Coote.
A young Robert Ryan is one of a multi-national collection of characters on a train bound for Berlin where they are due to hear an address by a Konrad Adanauer style politician who is endeavouring to oversee the peaceful unification of a defeated Germany in the wake of WWII.
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.
It seems to keep from drowning Lindley drank almost the entire contents of the vat that was enough beer to supply a full US Army division!Back on the "Berlin Express" Dr. Bernhardt seems safe to make it to the German capital city for the all important German unification conference but things, like throughout the entire film, don't go as smoothly as he and the allies hoped.
In that film like in "Berlin Express" the Nazis having lost the war, even though WWII was still going on when the movie was being made,planned to both get the German people to revolt against their allied conquerers and at the same time get the allies to turn against each other.P.S This is exactly what happened, at least the part of the allies turning against each other, in the forty years following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 leading to the Cold War. A war that lasted until the total collapse of the Communist Eastern European Block of "Peoples Republics" starting in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and finally the collapse of the once invincible Soviet Union itself in late summer and early autumn of 1991..
"Actual scenes in Frankfurt and Berlin were photographed by authorization of The United States Army of Occupation, The British Army of Occupation, The Soviet Army of Occupation." The film is based on a story by Curt Siodmak, a German writer, director and producer.
Most of the action takes place aboard the The Main Seiner, an American Army express train that ran from Paris to Berlin, with a stop at Frankfurt.
Dr Bernhardt, the German head of a fact-finding commission, had formulated a plan to unify his country and was on his way to an important conference in Berlin.When the train reaches Frankfurt, the passengers who were travelling in the same car as Bernhardt are taken in for questioning by a U.S. Army Colonel and it becomes apparent that the man who'd been killed was a decoy and that the passenger who'd called himself Otto Franzen was actually the real Bernhardt (Paul Lukas).
The whole movie has a realistic feel and Lucien Ballard's location footage of the heavily bombed cities of Frankfurt and Berlin is extremely impressive and also very affecting.The rather strained atmosphere which existed amongst the passengers of different nationalities at the beginning of the journey is later replaced by a spirit of cooperation when individuals from the four allied countries symbolically work together to search for Bernhardt.
Examples of this are the sequence during which the various train passengers are introduced, the footage which shows a number of the ruined buildings and also a scene during which Dr Bernhardt is attacked on the train."Berlin Express" is an interesting movie with a talented cast whose performances contribute strongly to the way in which the mood of a particular point in time is captured so convincingly.