There's apparently a word for movies heavily featuring the ruins of post-WWII Germany: Trümmerfilm ("rubble film"); this, along with Germany Year Zero and A Foreign Affair, forms an inadvertent loose trilogy of post-war Berlin viewed by foreign directors. (In a story that seems too good to be true, it's said Rossellini would mark ruins with chalk to make sure he didn't shoot the same places as Tourneur or Wilder.) Production conditions were tough; according to Chris Fujiwara, Wilder had wait to shoot until Tourneur was done, because there was so little equipment available. The views of destruction are extensive and still sobering; the supplemental voice-over narration, like Mark Hellinger's in The Naked City, tries far too hard to be adultly…

For quite some time Robert Ryan has been one of my very favourite actors. He was perhaps better known for many of his supporting roles but as he shows here, he was more than capable as a leading man, even if the film itself isn't up to his standards.

This post-WW2 mystery drama centres on a train full of multi-national passengers who become embroiled in an assassination plot involving a German who, after fighting an internal resistance against the Nazis during the war, has turned his attentions to reunifying his country. However, his enemies remain hot on his trail.

It's a slightly odd film, really. It employs an extremely intrusive voiceover that almost works in a way to try and…

There's apparently a word for movies heavily featuring the ruins of post-WWII Germany: Trümmerfilm ("rubble film"); this, along with Germany Year Zero and A Foreign Affair, forms an inadvertent loose trilogy of post-war Berlin viewed by foreign directors. (In a story that seems too good to be true, it's said Rossellini would mark ruins with chalk to make sure he didn't shoot the same places as Tourneur or Wilder.) Production conditions were tough; according to Chris Fujiwara, Wilder had wait to shoot until Tourneur was done, because there was so little equipment available. The views of destruction are extensive and still sobering; the supplemental voice-over narration, like Mark Hellinger's in The Naked City, tries far too hard to be adultly…

For quite some time Robert Ryan has been one of my very favourite actors. He was perhaps better known for many of his supporting roles but as he shows here, he was more than capable as a leading man, even if the film itself isn't up to his standards.

This post-WW2 mystery drama centres on a train full of multi-national passengers who become embroiled in an assassination plot involving a German who, after fighting an internal resistance against the Nazis during the war, has turned his attentions to reunifying his country. However, his enemies remain hot on his trail.

It's a slightly odd film, really. It employs an extremely intrusive voiceover that almost works in a way to try and…