La nuit de l'évasion

'Night Crossing' is about an enormous barrier designed not to keep enemies out but to keep its own people in…

'Night Crossing' is about a very long border fencer equipped with silent alarms and automatic firing systems…

'Night Crossing' is about the denial of the basic human rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…

'Night Crossing' is about the fear and pain that afflict so many families…

'Night Crossing' is about one attempt to risk a crossing through the border zone…

'Night Crossing' is about a loving father whose only desire is to give his boys what should never have been taken away from them…

'Night Crossing' is about a disturbed mother who wants her babies and her husband alive…

'Night Crossing' is about a caring husband who wants his family to be together but in a better place…

'Night Crossing' is about children who want to be free to reach at anytime the sky…

'Night Crossing' is about a hot-air balloon handcrafted and built by two families…

'Night Crossing' is about a balloon which could go just high enough to crash or catch fire and explode…

'Night Crossing' is about two determined men who want their family to climb into a hot air balloon and float away to 'liberty'…

'Night Crossing' is about the fear of getting caught by an evil regime…

'Night Crossing' is about a sensible man who can't let bad dreams stop him…

'Night Crossing' is about an icy policeman who wants every lookout tower on full alert…

With exquisite music by Jerry Goldsmith, Delbert Mann's 'Night Crossing' makes us realize the true value of freedom…

Final thoughts:

There are a few moments in everyone's life, certainly in public lives, that can define a person...

For those of us old enough to remember the Reagan presidency, seeing the clips again in the wake of his death makes it seem like those events happened just yesterday, or last week. The voice, the expressions, are all so familiar. But for a large percentage of people, these events might as well have happened fifty years ago, if not more. They are part of the distant past. President Reagan is a name, and not much more. President Gorbachev is another name, and not much more. So how can we remember these two men who had such a huge impact on their country?

Reagan and Gorbachev worked together to tear down the Berlin Wall and to steer their superpower nations away from nuclear confrontation

I use this at school with my aviation class in our hot air ballooning unit. Students are now so far removed from the time of "The Iron Curtain" that they find it hard to believe this is a true story. Fortunately there are plenty of newspaper clips online to prove it. The balloon in the movie is very close to what they actually built.

This movie is well done, after the first 10 minutes the class sits very quiet and gets caught up in the suspense and action. Don't know if I would recommend it for young children because of some of the violence. But great for middle school and above, and a special treat for those of us who remember the day the wall came down.

What can I say about this film other than the narrative is one of the most exciting in film history...and based on a true story! Being old enough to remember the Berlin Wall when it was still used to contain a country, this film gives you a dark insight into the grim incarceration of East Berliners, and their desperate attempts to escape, no matter what the cost. The film follows the lives of two families , who decide to escape using a hot-air balloon manufactured by themselves. Forever fearing arrest by the authorities, under scrutiny by neighbours, they have to calculate a plan to reach the other side of the wall. A tense & thrilling story of courage and determination which truly pays homage to all those who succeeded and failed the treacherous journey to West Berlin and freedom.

The movie Night Crossing captures the feelings experienced by the vast majority of East Germans during the period 1961-89. I lived in West Berlin during most of 1967 and travelled through The Wall into East Berlin on a weekly basis. Why? Excitement, crossing a border into a Soviet governed country, experiencing the smells and the feel of East Germany, which is why Night Crossing is excellent, it captures that very feeling, and it is exciting. I was arrested by the Vopos in Checkpoint Charlie and accosted by a man in his leather coat and dark glasses I am led to believe was Stasi. When I watch the movie I can smell cheap diesel and cooking oil, I can see the outdated vehicles, the drab clothing the public wore and the lacklustre produce in shop windows. It brings back memories of realising just how lucky I was to live in a free country. In 1988, I toured the DDR from East to West, North to South. East Germany had changed little since 1967. The Trabants, constantly breaking down, were still the main mode of private motorised transport, the shops still featured nothing much to tempt me, uniforms were still commonplace, but the people, the ordinary people were open and nice once you had gained their trust. Watch Night Crossing, it's as close to the truth as any movie you will see on divided Germany, even closer than two other favourites The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Funeral In Berlin.

Few surprises from Disney in the tale of two East German families who escape to the West in a homemade hot air balloon. Director Delbert Mann gives sometimes slack pacing to what could have been a taut thriller, and the dialog is at times stilted. Still, the players give fine readings of what they have to work with, excepting possibly Doug McKeon (familiar as On Golden Pond's recalcitrant teen), whose performance smacks more of the San Fernando Valley than Saxony. Mann doesn't skimp on East Bloc clichés like spying neighbors and a scarcity of fresh produce, but it is frighteningly effective when the police start throwing their totalitarian weight around. Of course, the movies are full of mean, authoritarian Germans who, regardless of their ideological leaning, dress neatly and shout orders in heavily accented English; Günter Meisner, who plays the chief communist baddie, gave much the same performance in The Winds of War miniseries as a famous anticommunist, Hitler. Still, even if a lot of this is B-grade stuff, the flight sequences are beautifully filmed, with the usual Disney flair. This also is interesting as one of a series of adult-themed films Disney produced in the late 70s and early 80s (The Devil and Max Devlin, The Watcher in the Woods), as the studio struggled to define itself in the post-post-Walt (but pre-Michael Eisner) years.