Corresponsal en Berlín

BERLIN CORRESPONDENT was one of many propaganda films that entertained World War II audiences in 1942. When it played the local theater houses in the New York area during the age of double features, BAMBI was on the top half of the bill with the DANA ANDREWS film second on the bill.

It's got a really improbable storyline but if you can accept the fact that this is "just a movie" and made for propaganda escapist fare in the early '40s, it's well worth watching.

Dana Andrews is excellent as an American reporter who risks his life so that his sweetheart and her professor father can escape the Nazis. By the time the story gets to the concentration camp scenes near the end, it has compiled a number of improbable twists and turns. Nevertheless, it's briskly paced, well acted and photographed in crisp B&W style that results in good entertainment. The story moves to a fast-moving climax when Dana's planned escape goes amok.

Martin Kosleck makes the most of his Nazi role, the kind he played often in these wartime dramas, and Virginia Gilmore is pleasantly appealing in the leading femme role. Mona Maris seemed to specialize in playing bad girl spies in these kind of stories.

Taut, tense and exciting, flawed only by some improbabilities in the script.

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.

We caught this movie on TCM. At first it struck us as having highly improbable scenes for Nazi Germany. But then, it struck us as being like the 1960s sitcom, "Hogan's Heroes". I can't help wondering if this movie inspired the makers of "Hogan's Heroes"?

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!