Beyond the Curtain ** (1960, Richard Greene, Eva Bartok, Marius Goring, Lucie Mannheim, Andrée Melly, George Mikell) – Classic Movie Review 13,090

The 1960 British independent thriller film Beyond the Curtain is based on Charles F Blair and A J Wallis’s novel Thunder Above, and stars Richard Greene, Eva Bartok and Marius Goring.

Director Compton Bennett’s moderate 1960 British independent thriller film Beyond the Curtain is based on Charles F Blair and A J Wallis’s novel Thunder Above, and stars Richard Greene, Eva Bartok, Marius Goring, Lucie Mannheim, Andrée Melly, and George Mikell.

Alas, though it looks promising, with its useful cast, intelligent subject and world-weary post-war mood, Beyond the Curtain is a quite cheap-looking, rather unconvincing, and fairly poorly-plotted Iron Curtain thriller, in which an airman (Richard Greene) goes to save an airline trolley dolly (Eva Bartok) from Soviet-held East Berlin.

Captain Jim Kyle (Richard Greene) is piloting a passenger plane to the West when it strays out of the air corridor from Berlin and is forced down by the Russians. Local authorities let the plane and passengers go, but his stewardess and fiancée Karin von Seefeldt (Eva Bartok) is held as a German national and sent back home to Dresden in East Germany. There she is used by the Stasi, the East German state security service and secret police, to help find her wanted dissident brother. Jim decides to go and get her out and back safely to the western sector of Berlin, if he can.

A more than passable cast seems rather uncomfortable with the intriguing and ambitious if tricky to realise material. It is a good subject for a film, capturing its era nicely. The script by John Cresswell and Compton Bennett maintains a level of interest but is sometimes melodramatic. And, thanks probably to the low budget and all-UK filming, the East German scene and Cold War atmosphere are unpersuasively depicted. Richard Greene underplays and Eva Bartok overacts. However, Eric Cross’s black and white cinematography and Eric Pakeman’s score are on the plus side. Overall, there is a much better film trying to get out of here, though it does remain entirely watchable.

Goring and Mannheim were husband and wife, married for 35 years till her death in 1976.

Also in the cast are John Welsh, Denis Shaw, Leonard Sachs, Annette Carell, Gaylord Cavallaro, and Carmen Blanck.

Set in East Berlin, the film is entirely shot in England, mainly in the studio at Walton Studios, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England.

All the cars in the movie are West German origin and not East Berlin cars. The hospital location is Royal Holloway College at Englefield Green.

Release date: April 1960 (UK).

Beyond the Curtain is directed by Compton Bennett, runs 88 minutes, is made by Martin Films and Welbeck Film Distributors, is released by J Arthur Rank Film Distributors (UK), is written by John Cresswell and Compton Bennett, is shot in black and white by Eric Cross, is produced by John Martin, and is scored by Eric Pakeman.

The cast are Richard Greene as Captain Jim Kyle, Eva Bartok as Karin von Seefeldt, Marius Goring as Hans Körtner, Lucie Mannheim as Frau von Seefeldt, Andrée Melly as Linda, George Mikell as Pieter von Seefeldt, John Welsh as Turner, Denis Shaw as Krumm, Annette Carell as governor, Gaylord Cavallaro as Twining, Leonard Sachs as waiter, Brian Wilde as Bill Seddon, Steve Plytas as Zimmerman, Guy Kingsley Poynter as Captain Law, André Mikhelson as Russian Colonel, and Carmen Blanck.

Eva Bartok (18 June 1927 – 1 August 1998) was born as Éva Márta Szőke Ivanovics, in Kecskemét, Hungary.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,090

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