With: Merle Oberon, Robert Ryan, Charles Korvin, Paul Lukas, Robert Coote, Reinhold Schünzel, Roman Toporow, Peter von Zerneck, Otto Waldis, Fritz Kortner, Michael Harvey, Tom Keene, Charles McGraw, Marle Hayden
Written by: Harold Medford, based on a story by Curt Siodmak
After his noir masterpiece Out of the Past, director Jacques Tourneur made this ambitious follow-up. It's not as solid in the story department, but it contains memorable images and conjures a certain gloomy mood. According to Wikipedia, it's a "trümmerfilm," or "rubble film," actually filmed in bombed-out locations in postwar Berlin. Like the Vienna of The Third Man, the allied-occupied city is divided into four zones, controlled by American, British, Russian, and French concerns. Five passengers of various nationalities, including American Robert Lindley (Robert Ryan) and French Lucienne Mirbeau (Merle Oberon), realize they are sharing a train with the prominent pacifist Dr. Heinrich Bernhardt (Paul Lukas), who is working to restore order in Germany. When Bernhardt disappears, the five band together to try and find him among the city's ruins, all fish out of water. Scenes take place in seedy nightclubs, and, memorably, among the huge tanks of a brewery, where pools of light and shadow help to create menace.
