cult film freak: DANA ANDREWS IN 'BERLIN CORRESPONDENT' W/ MARTIN KOSLECK

Dana Andrews in an early wartime role from the YEAR: 1942

Sustaining our Dana Andrews retrospective we'll share this with intense German actor Martin Kosleck as a kind of villain's villlain: a role Dana would play twenty-years later, and like it...

Kosleck is perhaps best known or recognized as the red-herring windmill resident/replacement in Alfred Hitchcock's post-war espionage-adventure classic, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT...

And unlike that memorable, sparse yet important cameo, he's pretty much the entire vehicle for this 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 Valentino pencil thin mustache usually given to Silent Movie stars, playing the most intrepid role by mere introduction...

Martin Kosleck & Dana Andrews YEAR: 1942

Extremely similar to Dana's ASSIGNMENT: PARIS in the early 1950's, here he's a New York broadcast telling America the names of all overseas Correspondents, ranging from men working in England to Holland...

Which sound like easy gigs 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, with the severity of his job, the attitude fits: especially in a feel-good wartime programmer. Dana's dashing Tom quickly warms up to pretty German ingenue (and Dana's SWAMP WATER girlfriend) Virginia Gilmore, who, like what happened with John Wayne's breakthrough STAGECOACH, the actress gets first-billing, having been more popular at the time: her character's father is his most vital source of information: a human McGuffin...

BERLIN Score: ***1/2

But she doesn't know anything, and stuck in a cold, heartless romance with intense Nazi Captain von Rau, played by 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.

Martin Kosleck in Berlin Correspondent

Kosleck, who'd thereafter play sinister Nazis, 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, after a shark-jumping scene where his voice is perfectly imitated as he's held prisoner, 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.