Berlin Correspondent

This 1942 film by 20th Century Fox, was shown the other night. It is pure propaganda, as many others of the period, when Hollywood was seen as the right medium to advance the cause for the war. Eugene Forde directed this mildly engrossing movie that although flawed has some surprising good moments.

Best of all is Bill Roberts, our man in Berlin, who transmits his radio broadcast with his own slant, telling what was really happening in spite of the censure he must go through. There is intrigue all over the place, but our hero is wiser than the people that are trying to get him. The plot involves some spying from a woman that Bill doesn't suspect is the daughter of his contact in Berlin, who sees the light when she learns her father has been imprisoned because of his illegal activities.

Dana Andrews is good as Bill Roberts, the American correspondent in Berlin. Virginia Gilmore is his love interest. Martin Koleck is perfect as Capt. von Rau, and Mona Maris does a good job portraying the bad Nazi girl.

The film is entertaining and while it doesn't break new ground, will keep the viewer entertained because of the good direction from Mr. Forde.

This was actually entertaining. The acting was quite good, and there was suspense and humor. The pace was just right -- not too frenetic, but it moved right along. The low budget was betrayed mostly by the sets. The concentration camp was obviously left over from a Western cowboy movie set. Log cabin watch towers? Also, the entrance to the camp looked like something from "F Troop." When a plane takes off from a supposed Nazi airfield, the buildings around the field look suspiciously like the sound stages on movie lots.

I also noticed the Hans Gruber name -- it was actually the name of the stamp shop being used by the hero and the heroine's father to pass secret information.

I actually liked that the Nazi colonel's secretary (who was secretly in love him) was not the stereotype that I expected, and her role was not what I expected either.

... with Dana Andrews in an early role, a couple of years before Laura.

American correspondent Bill Roberts (Dana Andrews) broadcasts live from Berlin in late 1941 before Pearl Harbor. You'd wonder WHY he does this since he has about three or four Germans huddled around him every time he broadcasts to make sure he says only positive happy sappy things about Germany. And then you find out why he doesn't just quit and go home. He has been discovering German secrets and inserting those secrets in code inside of his broadcasts. In America these secrets are translated and sent on to our allies in Europe.

The Germans know he is doing this, and they don't just kick him out of the country because they want to know his source. They've tried numerous detectives and PI's but Bill has spotted them all. So a colonel in the SS gets his girlfriend in the Gestapo to act as a damsel in distress in a restaurant so that Bill can ride to her rescue, and then she can strike up a friendship with Bill and worm her way into his confidence. It works all too well - he is a bit smitten - and she gets the info. This leads the Gestapo back to - her own father! And she was the one telling him the secrets! Yikes!

This is all disclosed early on, so I'm not really spoiling it for you. This was not one of Fox's A list productions AND it has that typical WWII era production preachy shrillness to it, but it does have a few points to recommend it. For one, I don't think I've seen an impressionist/voice actor or a Gestapo love triangle inserted into such a film before as significant plot points.

Also, as much as American films played up the evil side of the Third Reich even early in the war, they were still quite uninformed at this point. They knew there were concentration camps where German political prisoners were kept, but they gave the Nazis too much credit for compassion. The camp shown here has the prisoners looking well fed and looks no worse than a deep south prison of the era that employed chain gangs - although I'm not saying that was not pretty bad.

The end is rather interesting in that it is reminiscent of Casablanca in several ways, down to the irony and a pseudo "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" kind of moment. The thing is, this film came first!

I'd recommend it. It is not long enough to get tiresome, is original in spots, and you get to see Dana Andrews in an early role.

Very mucjh reminding of similar rants like "Comrade X" and Lubitsch's "To Be or Not to Be" and other similar comedies who all compete in turning all established officials into astronomic dunderheads and ridiculous idiots, and here is even Sig Ruman to complete the Nazi haberdashery getting out of his pants. All you miss here is a caricature of Hitler also. But Dana Andrews is good with a moustache, almost like Douglas Fairbanks Jr, and Virginia Gilmore is charming and sexy enough, even for a German spy. The plot is ridiculously absurd to start with, but when it comes to her father it gets more interesting, and there is even some inside views of a concentration camp with its atrocities - fairly iunknown to Amerticans in 1942. In brief, this is qualified entertainment, there are some pleasant surprises towards the end as the plots thicken up, and of course it all ends well for everyone except for Germany, - as everyone knows. It is better than "Comrade X" but can not compete with "To Be or Not to Bet" or with "Pimpernel Smith".

"Berlin Correspondent" is set just before the United States entered World War II. Bill Roberts (Dana Andrews) is an American news correspondent and it's pretty obvious he hates Nazi Germany, which is where he's been stationed. The Nazis heavily censor his news broadcasts...yet somehow information about the Nazis seems to sneak out...and they suspect Bill is up to something. Eventually they learn his secret but instead of just being tossed out of the country, the Nazis have other plans for him.

Despite having Dana Andrews in the picture, this is a pretty unremarkable film. The Nazis are almost all stupid as well as evil...and Bill is able to trick them again and again because of this. If only the Nazis were this dumb! Overall, a decent time- passer but not much more. And, by the way, oddly the Germans almost all sound just like Americans!