Berlin Express ***½ (1948, Merle Oberon, Robert Ryan, Charles Korvin, Paul Lukas, Robert Coote) – Classic Movie Review 5695

Merle Oberon and Robert Ryan lead Jacques Tourneur’s gripping and entertaining 1948 postwar film noir espionage thriller Berlin Express, with a tense train setting, about an Allied group battling to save a German peace-worker diplomat abducted by his Nazi fanatic opponents.

The assorted passengers on the train in the divided Germany just after World War Two work together to try to locate the German diplomat ready for a vital peace conference.

Berlin Express is notable as the first American movie filmed (in part) inside Germany after the Second World War in devastated Frankfurt and Berlin, shooting with the cooperation of the occupying armies. Berlin was divided into four sectors, and the production was the first to receive permission to film in the Soviet zone. It is also filmed on location in Paris, though RKO built a studio reproduction of the city’s Gare de L’Est rail station in its Path Studios in Culver City for the film.

The performers make the most of the opportunity, and there is an excellent support cast – Charles Korvin as Perrot, Paul Lukas as Dr Bernhardt, Robert Coote as Sterling, Reinhold Schünzel as Walther, Roman Toporow, Peter von Zerneck, Otto Waldis, Fritz Kortner, Michael Harvey, Tom Keene, James Nolan, Will Allister, David Clarke, Robert Dalban, Rory Mallinson, Marle Hayden, Gene Evans, Larry Nunn, Buddy Roosevelt, Norbert Schiller, Leonid Snegoff and Charles McGraw.

And Harold Medford turns in a good, urgent and intelligent screenplay, based on a catchily themed story by Curt Siodmak. But it is ultimately Tourneur’s brisk, capable and fast-moving direction and Lucien Ballard’s striking black and white cinematography that lift it out of the rut of routine train thrillers.

It was ambitious idea and the pre-production logistics and the shooting both proved expectedly tricky. Tourneur had difficulty getting a plane out of Paris and Oberon suffered a fractured jaw, so the Hollywood production was delayed for several weeks after shooting finished in Europe in early September 1947.

Berlin Express is directed by Jacques Tourneur, runs 86 minutes, is made and released by RKO Radio Pictures, is written by Harold Medford, based on a story by Curt Siodmak, is shot in black and white by Lucien Ballard, is produced by Bert Granet, and is scored by Friedrich Hollaender [Frederick Hollander] and Constantin Bakaleinikoff (musical director), with Art Direction by Albert S. D’Agostino and Alfred Herman.

Oberon was married to Ballard at this time.

Granet imagined the story after reading a Life magazine photo-essay about a Paris-Frankfurt-Berlin train. He spent six weeks in Germany and France in late 1946 taking 16mm footage to use as reference in the writing of the script.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5695

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