The Berlin Airlift is an amazing story. Hard to dramatise though because it was mostly transporting food. I mean, there were Soviets hanging around, and planes crashed and it was high tension, but... they were truck drivers.
Come to think of it, mabye that's how this film should've been done - the story of truck drivers, like They Drive All Night, with accidents and banter and being brave.
But after the first half hour this film basically drops the airlift story (I wonder why? Fear of upsetting Russians? The Cold War had started but maybe they needed their co operation to film on location in Germany). Instead it becomes a two-American-soldiers-romance Germans story.
The Americans are Montgomery Clift, as an naive air craft crew guy, and Paul Douglas as a blustering German hater. The story progressed in an unexpected way. Both fall in love with local girls but Clift's is only pretending to get out of the country, while Douglas uses his girl as his mistress then falls for her (was this influenced by Letter to Three Wives?) and the girl discovers democracy.
The location footage is interesting as is the semi documentary treatment. And I enjoyed seeing Clift. But it isn't a very good movie. It feels as though it was made with one hand tied behind its back. The whole Berlin Airlift angle is barely used - you rarely get a sense of Soviet pressure,it could be set any time in the immediate post war period. It was dull. George Seaton who directed has done a lot better.
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