As is often the case these days I find myself drawn to movies about the Second World War made in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Maybe because WWII loomed so large over my family that the tales that they told about the War stuck with me. I recall hearing tales from those much older than I of how the War created both tragedies affecting ordinary Britons and how some of these ordinary Britons also turned into amazing heroes. I also heard stories of the black market, the rationing, the paranoid fear of invasion, the people who went to war and didn’t come back, the stories of kids evacuated from London and the whispered but vehement criticisms of those people who didn’t ‘do their bit’ or worse had pro-German sympathies.
Part of the reason why I like the WWII movies made in the 40’s to 50’s time period, apart from the aesthetic and the more static camerawork which I like, is that they were made much closer to the time period that they were portraying. Sometimes in the case of today’s movie ‘Berlin Correspondent’, they were made whilst the war was ongoing and were referencing current or near current events such as in this week’s movie when the attack by the Japanese Empire on the US base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii is mentioned. Also the mores as portrayed by these movies are far closer to actual social attitudes and moral viewpoints than they would be if the same scripts were made today. As the great movie and media commentator The Critical Drinker has pointed out remaking classic movies or rehashing scripts from previous eras for ‘modern audiences’ rarely works out to the full satisfaction of those who know and understand the originals. Think what the BBC and Disney did to ‘Doctor Who’ and you might get some idea how the identity politics ideologues would treat a script such as ‘Berlin Correspondent’.
Anyway this is a good old fashioned spy movie where the plot revolves around an American journalist, Bill Roberts (played by Dana Andrews) who is working as the Berlin correspondent for an American newspaper. He also makes broadcasts on German short wave radio. The Germans come to suspect that the journalist is sending coded information in his broadcasts about German military policy. The suspicions that the Germans have about Roberts increase and the investigation into him and how he is getting his information past the German censors and also where he is getting his information from is handed over to the Gestapo.
This movie gives a small inkling into how the Nazis treated those who they considered as dissenters. It’s also a movie with action sequences, none of which were done with any sort of CGI of course, fights and desperate escapes from certain death. One of the historical points that I picked up on in this movie are the almost contemporaneous references to stuff such as the Nazis Aktion T4 campaign to murder the mentally and physically ill. These comments by characters were in the context of an anti-Nazi dissenter being sent to a mental hospital to be murdered. For this to be mentioned in the script suggests to me that public knowledge in the Allied nations of these particular Nazi crimes was maybe more widespread than we living in later years may sometimes assume they were.
As I said this is a good old fashion romping yarn and well worth and hour and ten minutes of your time. Quality-wise it’s pretty good for its age but the ending is spoiled somewhat by some banners appearing on the copy I’ve found but not so much to detract from the quite surprising ending.
Hope you enjoy it.
