Review of Decision Before Dawn

The presence of this prestigious but obscure war/espionage movie among the Academy Award nominees for the Best Picture of 1951 – where it was up against such heavyweights as A PLACE IN THE SUN, QUO VADIS and A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE – has always intrigued me. The film is certainly well-made and acted on the surface but, I suppose, what impressed most at the time was its being based on a real episode of WWII (back then a mere 6 years away), it was shot among the actual German ruins and served as an introduction to two German actors – Oskar Werner and Hildegard Knef (billed here as Hildegarde Neff) – who would subsequently become internationally renowned film stars; incidentally, I have just acquired two other espionage films the latter made around this time, DIPLOMATIC COURIER (1952; with Tyrone Power) and THE MAN BETWEEN (1953; co-starring James Mason). Despite being third billed (after Fox stalwarts Richard Basehart and Gary Merrill), Werner is the true protagonist of the film and he acquits himself superbly playing a meek medical soldier who, after seeing his comrade being pushed out the window to his death for passing disparaging comments on the Third Reich, decides to join the Allies by acting as their informer on the German Front; a youthful but unmistakable Klaus Kinski appears very briefly as another prospective candidate for the job. During the course of the film, Werner attracts the affection of two women – a French girl (Dominique Blanchar) stationed in the monastery being used as the Allied H.Q. and a German artiste (Knef), sent by a suspicious, ultra-nationalistic German soldier he meets along the way to seduce him in his hotel room, but who eventually alerts Werner to his being watched. Merrill plays the sympathetic American superior officer while Basehart is the cynical communications official who accompanies Werner and an irascible German spy dubbed "Tiger" (Hans Christian Blech) into enemy territory. While accomplishing his mission of locating the new position of a German division that was being a thorn in the Allies' side, Werner is briefly engaged as the personal assistant of a proud German Colonel with a heart condition (a fine performance from O.E. Hasse) and ultimately gives his life for the cause on a beach after being chased around the rubble-strewn streets of Germany.