Escape from East Berlin

Escape from East Berlin (1962)

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East Berlin, shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall. Kurt Schröder and his family dig a tunnel to escape to West Berlin as they struggle to overcome the obstacles blocking their underground path to freedom.

Date of release
1962-10-22
TMDB
5.9 / 10 (18)
Runtime
1h 36m
Genres
Drama, Thriller
Director
Robert Siodmak

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Berlin

Escape from East Berlin is a 1962 thriller film directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Don Murray, Christine Kaufmann and Werner Klemperer. Based on true events, the film follows a group of East German defectors who attempt to cross the Berlin Wall via tunneling. An international co-production between the United States and West Germany, the film was shot on-location in West Berlin and at Tempelhof Studios.

Production

Since the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 stories of escapes from the East, both failed and successful, had filled the news in the West and led to competition between US networks to record a tunnel escape. MGM decided to take advantage of the public interest with a feature film inspired by real events.

In addition to playing a co-starring role, German-American actor Werner Klemperer was also the film's casting director and an (uncredited) associate producer, acting as a liaison between the American and German elements thanks to his bilingualism.

Before Don Murray was cast, Horst Buchholz was offered the role of Kurt Schröder. However he declined, having just played an East German character in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961) and feeling the part was too similar.

After pre-production in Munich, shooting began on May 28, 1962 in West Berlin. Studios interiors were shot at Tempelhof Studios. A 300-yard long plaster replica of the Berlin Wall (originally constructed for One, Two, Three) was brought from UFA Studios to just four blocks from the actual Wall for filming. The wall briefly became a tourist attraction and attracted the attention of East German guards.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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