THE BIG LIFT

 "THE BIG LIFT" (1950)

SYNOPSIS: "During the 1948 Berlin Airlift, as British and American forces break a Russian blockade of the divided German city, a pair of American soldiers fall in love with local women against a backdrop of increasing Cold War tensions. Ground control specialist Hank Kowalski finds happiness with the idealistic Gerda, but, when pilot Danny MacCullough falls for the beautiful, mysterious Frederica, his friends question her motives."

STARRING: Paul Douglas, Bruni Löbel, Montgomery Clift, Cornell Borchers, O.E. Hasse, Gerald Aarons and William Pierson.

SCREENPLAY: George Seaton

DIRECTOR: George Seaton

CRITICAL RESPONSE:

Variety praised it for a "masterful scripting job" and "a couple of winning performances" from Clift and Douglas.

Harrison's Reports called it "an absorbing postwar drama," with the depiction of the airlift operations "taut and exciting."

John McCarten of The New Yorker liked most of the picture, calling it "a good movie as long as it sticks to the impressive actuality that inspired it," though he was less impressed with the "fairly routine romantic and comic doings."