Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Asad Almond A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Michelle Ridley The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Jim Mullen Tate (TheFearmakers) Martin Kosleck est known or recognized by movie fans as the red-herring windmill resident replacement in Alfred Hitchcock's classic, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, and unlike that memorable, sparse yet important cameo, he's pretty much the entire vehicle for this particular CORRESPONDENT made two years later, only now we're on his home turf during, not before, The Second World War: BERLIN, Germany against American Dana Andrews, with a pencil thin mustache usually given to Silent Movie villains, playing the most intrepid role by mere introduction... A New York broadcast telling America the names of all overseas Correspondents, ranging from men working in England to Holland, which sound like soft jobs as opposed to where Dana's Bill Roberts works, reading what seems like German-written propaganda about their side of things, but with secret coded adjectives, he gets through to his newspaper back home, and, despite acting permanently teflon, like some kind of one-dimensional comic book hero (not one of Andrews' best roles), with the severity of his job, the attitude fits: especially in a feel-good wartime programmer.She doesn't know anything, and stuck in a cold, heartless romance with intense Nazi Captain von Rau, played by Martin Kosleck, she's actually in the most danger since he's the scariest character. But like all good actors, there's a vulnerable side that sheds wan light through an otherwise steely countenance. With his severe looks, though, it's not easy to pull off being all that friendly.Kosleck, who'd play sinister Germans throughout his career, owns the picture for more than his narrowed-eyes wielding an intense, soulless reflection of The Furor's agenda. While Andrews' story revs up, taking verbal shots at The Third Reich in an obvious attempt to make Hitler seem like the type of clown Charlie Chaplin portrayed in THE GREAT DICTATOR, the sole heavy, by standing firm and playing the role with unbridled fervor while still remaining alert and controlled, is the centerpiece - even as Andrews eventually becomes a more physical hero, and gets deeper into trouble - from a last minute race-against-time attempt to save his girl involving a psycho ward and then his own hopeful prison escape - our edgy German spotlight is the reason that anyone fears anything at all: In short, Kosleck has the job of embodying the entire Nazi Party.

gordonl56 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.

Robert J. Maxwell 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.

oldmovieman Ouch! This wildly implausible story finds Dana Andrews as an American radio correspondent broadcasting censored news back to America shortly before America's entry into WWII. Andrews, however, is getting secret information about military failures of the German army and covertly incorporating them into his newscasts. The secret info is then published in the American newspaper that has the code, much to the Germans embarrassment. The contrived plot has a Gestapo officer use his fiancée to cozy up to Andrews and learn the source of his information. She is almost immediately successful in solving the mystery (it was that easy?) and informing her fiancé. But the joke's on her when Andrews' source turns out to be her father and he's tortured and sent to an asylum for execution. Incredibly, the Gestapo doesn't execute or even arrest Andrews as a spy but lets him go about his business. Not to fear, Andrews saves the day. How? He just impersonates a Nazi psychiatrist (complete with colonel's uniform), visits the asylum, arranges the father's escape, and ships him to Switzerland. How does he solve the problem of the border crossing? Easy. He gives the father his passport, which he had altered by a friend so the 60 year old father would pass as Andrews. The plot gets far worse from here but it's too much too describe. As for the tone of the movie, the treatment of the Germans is so cartoonish and the dialogue so over the top that you'll cringe. Yes, this was a propaganda film but a little more subtlety would have gone a long way. There is, however, one reason to watch this horror: Virginia Gilmore as the Gestapo officer's fiancée. First, she is gorgeous. Second, she has the worst lisp of any leading lady I've ever seen on film. Every "this" becomes "thith." It's really amazing she got any roles at all.