Overrated

Crappy film

Best movie ever!

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

BERLIN CORRESPONDENT 1942This a 20th Century Fox film is another of the wartime flag wavers that flooded the theatres during World War Two. This stars, Dana Andrews, Virginia Gilmore, Mona Maris, Erwin Kaiser, Martin Kosleck, Sig Ruman and Henry Rowland.It starts in November 1941, Andrews, an American radio correspondent, sends out valuable espionage information during his daily broadcasts from Berlin. This is annoying the Nazi types to no end. They want to know where he is getting this info and plug the leak. Gestapo colonel Martin Kosleck (in another of his great Nazi roles) assigns his best agents to follow the man. Andrews though always manages to give the slip to his shadows. He then meets with his German contact for the German intelligence information. Kosleck has finally reached the end of his tether with Andrews evading his tails. He assigns his girlfriend, Virginia Gilmore to keep tabs of the American. This she does rather quickly by posing as a woman in distress. Andrews, being ever so gallant, helps Gilmore cover a café bill. The smooth talking Yank soon has a date lined up with the pretty Gilmore. Of course the man has no idea this is all a plan laid out by Gestapo man, Kosleck. Now the plot thickens as Andrews' underground contact turns out to be Miss Gilmore's father. The man, Erwin Kaiser, hates the Nazis and wants to help in their defeat. The info he gathers is from Gilmore who thinks it is all just table talk she got from boyfriend Kosleck.Anyways, after a couple of dates with Andrews, Gilmore discovers that the information he receives is written in invisible ink on stamps. He buys these from a local shop where Kaiser happens to frequent. The Nazis raid the place and soon are pounding on Kaiser's and daughter Gilmore's door. Gilmore now realizes that she has inadvertently turned her father in. She now only wants to help her father.As the Gestapo burst in, Kaiser starts yelling at Gilmore calling her a cow for turning him in. This causes Kosleck and the Gestapo swine to believe that Gilmore is still a loyal Nazi. (Seen this plot twist at least a dozen times in various films)Kosleck soon has Kaiser in a cell receiving some "gentle" questioning. Kaiser refuses to talk and is soon set to an insane sanatorium. There he will of course be found dead of some accident or some such thing. Gilmore, at wits end, seeks out Andrews to help save her father. Now there is a whole series of somewhat over the top heroics by Andrews. He dresses up like a German officer and visits the sanatorium. He needless to say soon springs the old man and smuggles him over the border for some time with the Swiss. Matters take a turn for the worse for Andrews as December 7th has rolled around. Germany stands with her Japanese ally and Andrews is grabbed up and tossed into a concentration camp. There are some more bits of daring do and the likes before Andrews and Gilmore are winging it out of the country in a stolen aircraft. This is a typical early war propaganda flag waver with the dashing hero getting away from the enemy. (this time with a girl) With only a 70 minute runtime it moves along quickly enough. The German's being played as complete morons in every film of this type is starting to get a bit long in the tooth. One starts to wonder how they ever took over all of Europe. It is still worth a look as a decent example of the genre.The film was directed by regular Charlie Chan helmsman, Eugene Forde. One time Oscar nominated, Virgil Miller is the director of photography.Some will recall Sig Ruman from his role in STALAG 17 as the German guard, Sgt Schulz.

Whew. What a piece of period work. It's as if you'd been stuffed into a time capsule that was otherwise filled with unpleasant circumstances.Dana Andrews is Bill Roberts -- the kind of Hollywood hero name that is so bland it almost fades as soon as it's printed -- a Berlin radio correspondent for an American newspaper. His reports on the ongoing war are carefully scrutinized by the Nazi censors but they contain coded messages to his newspaper so that genuine information gets through. The Gestapo chief, Martin Kosleck, realizes that something is going on but he can't figure out what it is. He calls in the censors who can't explain it. "GET OUT!", he roars, after ordering them to put on their uniforms because they're being sent to the front -- "Dzah Russian front!" A trembling detective who was supposed to tail Andrews but lost him during an air raid, is lucky to escape from Kosleck's office with his skin intact. Thereafter the detective provides some comic moments, like those of Inspector Clouseau in the "Pink Panther" movies.Martin Kosleck is the epitome of Nazihood. Kosleck hated Hitler and left Germany in the 30s. In Hollywood, he wound up playing Goebbels five times and innumerable other Nazi types. Well, he fitted the role. He had a piercing stare and sharp features, evoking some kind of fierce rodent, maybe a ferret or wolverine. And he looked splendid in a Gestapo uniform. I'm convinced that one of the reasons behind Hitler's early charisma was the tailor who designed German uniforms. Whoever it was, he outdid himself with the Gestapo and the SS. Black boots, black uniforms, silver decorations and braids, and a red-white-black swastika armband. I mean -- impressive, right? Every day is Hallowe'en. As an adolescent I was attracted to the Marine Corps because of their snazzy dress uniforms. What kind of uniform would you prefer to wear: a garbage man's or a Zouave's? The story is rather twisted, as spy stories tend to be. If Andrews is the good guy and Kosleck is the heavy, Virginia Gilmore is in the middle, in more ways than one. It's a complex role. She's a competent actress and attractive to boot. Don't know what happened to her. But, in the scene in which the Gestapo burst into her room, tugging Andrews along as a prisoner, and put Gilmore's father under arrest, Andrews stops them and claims Gilmore's father is innocent and that he, Andrews, will testify to it in court at the trial. "Court? Trial? My dear man, this is Germany." Kosleck delivers the line smoothly, effortlessly. All the dialog follows such conventions.Sig Rumann has a delicious part as a psychiatrist in charge of a hospital for the insane and otherwise unfit. He's the same pompous buffoon he is in all of his other films. He's extremely amusing. The guy just can't help it. The pilot who appears at the climax is Henry Rowland, born Wolfram Von Bock in Omaha, Nebraska. He probably played as many Germans as Kosleck did. He was an American but looked as German as he in fact was. Unfortunately for Rowland he had the face of an enlisted man, not an officer. There seems to have been a whole colony of German-Americans around Omaha in those days: Nick Nolte, Paula Zahn. Fred Astaire was born there under the name Frederick Austerlitz.Anyway, at one point or another, every one of the good folks are in trouble. There are intrigues and betrayals and last-minute escapes. But not to worry. It's one of those movies that ends with the loving couple flying off to freedom while the ferret is up to his neck in tribulations.It's an easy way of passing the time, like looking through an album of old photos.

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.

Dana Andrews plays an American radio correspondent whose broadcasts are suspected of concealing codes containing war information. Andrews becomes embroiled with a young Nazi sympathizer, played by Virginia Gilmore, whose father is an ardent anti-Nazi, and whose fiancée (Martin Kosleck) is a Nazi colonel. Andrews manages to pull off some rather outrageous stunts during this film but nevertheless, it's an entertaining, if somewhat typical propaganda film of the era.Virginia Gilmore is very attractive, while Kosleck, as usual, is mean as dirt as the Nazi. In real life, of course, he got out of Germany just in time, as he was tried in absentia by the Nazis and sentenced to death. He enjoyed playing members of the Third Reich, as he loathed them for what they did to Germany.