RKO. Director Jacques Tourneur; Producer Bert Granet; Screenplay Harold Medford; Camera Lucien Ballard; Editor Sherman Todd; Music Frederick Hollander; Art Director Albert S. D'Agostino, Alfred Herman
Merle Oberon
Robert Ryan
Charles Korvin
Paul Lukas
Robert Coote
Reinhold Schunzel
Most striking feature of this production is its extraordinary background of war-ravaged Germany. With a documentary eye, this film etches a powerfully grim picture of life amidst the shambles. It makes awesome and exciting cinema.
Chief defect of the screenplay [based on a story by Curt Siodmak] is its failure to break away from the formula of anti-Nazi films. The Nazis, now underground, are still the heavies but it's difficult to get excited about such a group of ragged hoodlums. Their motivation in the pic, moreover, is never explained satisfactorily as they set about kidnapping a prominent German democrat, played by Paul Lukas.
Starting out on the Paris-to-Berlin express to an Allied conference on the unification of Germany, Lukas gets waylaid in Frankfurt despite an over-elaborate scheme of guarding him. Symbolizing the Big Four powers, other passengers on the train include an American (Robert Ryan), a Frenchwoman (Merle Oberon), an Englishman (Robert Coote), and a Russian (Roman Toporow) plus a dubious character of unknown nationality (Charles Korvin).
Ryan establishes himself as a firstrate actor in this film, demonstrating conclusively that his brilliant performance in Crossfire was no one-shot affair.
(B&W) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1948. Running time: 86 MIN.
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