Hotel Berlin

Most of the wartime pictures made in the US portray the Nazis as complete sadists...almost demonic. While there are bits of that in this film, the way they portray the Nazis in the final weeks of the war is a bit more multidimensional.

In some ways, the film plays like a Nazified version of Grand Hotel- -with this Berlin hotel being a way to tie together the various stories in the picture. There are evil Nazis, not quite so evil Nazis, Germans not in the military that hate the Nazis and Germans who are just hoping to survive. As for the really terrible Nazis, some of the better actors who specialize in portraying evil characters are here...such as George Coulouris, Henry Danielle and Raymond Massey. The stories are engaging and the picture manages to show a reasonably accurate picture of Germany in the final days...which is amazing since the film came out only weeks before the war ended in Europe. Well made and its only fault is that, at times, the film seems overly long and a bit of editing would have helped the tempo.

By the way, some of the anti-Nazis in the film were portrayed by folks who actually DID escape from Nazi Europe, such as Frank Reicher, Peter Lorre and Helmut Dantine.