The Big Lift (film #1 on Side B of Disc #6 of War Classics DVD Megapack). [Category: Military & Propaganda]

Montgomery Clift and Paul Douglas star in this fictionalized account of two air force men involved in the Berlin Airlift, when the U. S. Air Force flew in food and supplies to Berlin after the Soviets blockaded the city. What is unusual about this film is that all the other American military personnel in it were played by the real GIs involved in the airlift. The story is personal, however. It involves the two main characters each getting involved with women in Berlin. Clift almost gets suckered into marrying a woman who is trying to get into the U.S. so she can hook up with her German lover there, while Douglas, who is anti-German after having had traumatic experiences as a P.O.W. during the war, becomes more sympathetic to them after teaching a German woman what democracy is all about. The film is intelligently made for the most part, showing the complexities of the situation in post-war Berlin. It shows that the roots of many of the German’s corrupt and unethical behaviors come from post-war social disintegration, the need to survive, and the corrupt values they were taught as children in Hitler’s Germany, yet it also doesn’t let them off the hook for them. It also shows that a desire for revenge, though understandable, can nevertheless have painful consequences if it is acted out, in a disturbing scene where Douglas beats up a German man who may have been a prison camp guard who tormented him (the film doesn’t totally tell us whether the man actually was the guard, or whether he just looked like him––this makes the scene far more disturbing), then discovers that he feels worse instead of better from doing that. A few other scenes are a bit farfetched and pat, especially the scene where Douglas’ girlfriend finally “gets” the Constitution, but they are outnumbered by the more intelligent sequences. An interesting, if Hollywoodized, portrait of post-war Berlin, and the American military’s experience of it.

Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ***. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: *****. Overall Rating: ****.