StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

mraculeated The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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.

mark.waltz Two years after being a "Foreign Correspondent" and really making an impact (leading to stardom), Dana Andrews moved To Berlin, where as a different character, he is forced to speak in code to get the truth out as Germany takes over much of Europe. Nazi Martin Kosleck is determined to silence the truth and has Andrews followed. However, the dunce trailing Andrews is constantly recognized through his attempts at disguise so Kosleck changes his methods to utilize a female instead. His fiancée Virginia Gilmore gets the job and uses Andrews to get her objector father out of a mental asylum. Kosleck's jealous secretary (Mona Maris) plots to keep Kosleck and Gilmore from marrying, and vindictively sets up everybody's downfall.Almost comedic with its serious plot, this even has a bit of a "Prisoner of Zenda" subplot thrown in with a German actor utilizing Andrews' voice on radio while Andrews lingers in a concentration camp. Sig Ruman is the head of the mental institution Andrews briefly infiltrates (disguised as a Nazi psychiatrist) and is an exact duplicate of "Hogan Heroes"' Colonel Klink. But this is the world of the Nazis where the plot indicates that even a wisecrack about the Fuhrer can get one killed or shipped off to the Russian front. There's even a character who dramatically declares "I know nothing!", Sgt. Schultz's oft-quoted line from "Hogan's Heroes" which makes you wonder if the creators of that show viewed this movie then decided to go ahead with the premise of that often skewered sitcom.While there were comedies which poked fun at the rigidness of the Nazis and even the appearance of Hitler, there's nothing structurally comedic about this plot to make it funny, an insult to the viewers intelligence. We know that when Chaplin, Jack Benny or Hal Roach make a film with a Hitler type character there, they are going for parody, but in the case of an A studio like 20th Century Fox thinking that burlesquing the extremely dangerous Nazis during the war shows their lack of trust in the brains of their viewing audience. This seems like something that one of the poverty row studios like Monogram or PRC might produce. The laughs that do come are there because the viewer can't help but laugh at the film maker's naiveté in thinking that the audiences didn't find the whole thing absurd...and insulting.

blanche-2 Dana Andrews plays an American radio correspondent whose broadcasts are suspected of concealing codes containing war information. Andrews becomes embroiled with a young Nazi sympathizer, played by Virginia Gilmore, whose father is an ardent anti-Nazi, and whose fiancée (Martin Kosleck) is a Nazi colonel. Andrews manages to pull off some rather outrageous stunts during this film but nevertheless, it's an entertaining, if somewhat typical propaganda film of the era.Virginia Gilmore is very attractive, while Kosleck, as usual, is mean as dirt as the Nazi. In real life, of course, he got out of Germany just in time, as he was tried in absentia by the Nazis and sentenced to death. He enjoyed playing members of the Third Reich, as he loathed them for what they did to Germany.

silogram-1 Goof: When the plane takes off it appears to be a Lockheed Electra (twin horizontal stabilizers) and when it lands, it appears to be a Douglas DC-3 (single horizontal stabilizer). As sol1218 said, there are other aeronautical goofs in the story. Berlin is being dive bombed. USA and Britain had no dive bombers in European theatre.The Luftwaffe knows that the American is taking off in a stolen plane, as sol1218 said, and yet their slow flying transport plane is not chased and shot down by any Lufwaffe fighters.I am an Electrical Engineer. The electrocution on the barbed wire is most unrealistic, all the wires are at the same potential, yet the escaping prisoner gets the current from hand to hand. In fact, he would be electrocuted when his feet are on the ground and he first touches the wire.