User Reviews

"Die Luftbrücke - Nur der Himmel war frei" or "The Airlift" or "Berlin Airlift" is a German film from 2005 and despite its age, it is still among the most known works by Israeli director Drar Zahavi and same is true for writer Martin Rauhaus. I see here on IMDb that this is basically a two-part mini-series that runs for 3 hours in total, but there are also alternate versions out there like the one I just watched and that one only ran for slightly over 2 hours and I guess they decided to cut out the less interesting stuff. The cast is pretty phenomenal if you take a look at the actors here. This is still evidence that films about the war or lets say about the years after are really interesting to German big name actors. A historical reference is crucial. The lead actress in this television production is Bettina Zimmermann and while I have been harsh on her in the past, I must say she was fairly solid in here. Certainly her looks helped too as there is no denying she has been among Germany's most beautiful actresses for a long time. But yeah, it's not just looks here as she is solid for the most part and when she is not, this is due to the script and not her fault. Yes there are some pretty weak moments of dialogue writing in here, especially in the first half when the film desperately makes references about and hints to future political events. So yes the first half here was probably just a 4/10, but the moment Noethen enters the stage it gets a lot better and he really shines and elevates the material, even if that is also probably not too much of a challenge next to Ferch and Zimmermann. But never mind, the second half is when the film gets things right. The writing improves a lot and the story gets much more interesting in terms of who she is gonna stay with. Yes maybe the film is a bit too much on the forced happy ending for everybody page, but it is tolerable and the second 90 minutes that I give a 6/10 make it easy to ignore some of the weaknesses from early on. So you may not be wrong if you say a 5/10 should be my final rating then and I probably would have if this was listed as a mini-series here on IMDb, but lets be generous now. And hey, alpha male Heino Ferch is not getting the girl for once? Noethen is really one to be jealous of in here. Also the film overall elaborates nicely on the subject of West Berlin being isolated inside the GDR and how this place was supplied with food through a logistic masterpiece. Sure the film enters schmaltz territory sometimes with the best friend's wedding or some of the words spoken by Zimmermann's character to her two men, but at least there are good parts too and it is not all garbage. The love triangle is entirely fictitious here as they probably thought a mere historic movie would probably not have entertained the masses enough, so they took the safe path and well, while it's not always good, it's definitely way above Rosamunde Pilcher level. As a whole, the film has some good moments in terms of history and romantic drama, the latter mostly thanks to Northen saving this film from being entirely forgettable. I give it a thumbs up and suggest you check it out. There are many 3 hour television films about history or catastrophes from Germany that are extremely weak. This is not one of them.

What a fantastic premise: A movie about the Berlin Airlift. It should have it all. Tragedy. Suspense. Comradeship. Rivals. Berliner Frauleins and tough US pilots. love and Tears. What we've got, is a film with none of the above. Heino Ferch tries to impersonate John Wayne or so, but he fails miserably. He acts so wooden, that at any given moment he should crack. He tries to play the tough guy, instead of being a tough guy! Why would Bettina Zimmermann's character fall in love with him? Cause they were throwing stones in a lake? Cause he brings her coal bricks? The SFX are very, very well done. Too much though. The hundreds or so planes over Berlin, look like an attack-fighter-formation-squadron rather than an organised airlift – as it actually was. Interestingly enough, the White House, the Kremlin, and General Lucius D. Clays office seem all to be one and the same dark and dusty set. Notice the same drapes, hanging deep down the windows, as if a protective shield against nuclear fallout. Why is almost every scene INSIDE dark and dusty? By the way, GENERAL LUCIUS D. CLAY, comes across as a small time, insecure, looser General, who doest trust in his own noble idea the airlift. He was very much the opposite. So you combine all those individual blunders and the result is a film with that builds toward no passion, no suspense and no historic accuracy. Sad, it started out so promising

A few weeks ago the German broadcaster "SAT1" advertised this movie as the "TV-Event of the year" - sorry, but I've seen better things on TV this year.

I didn't thought much of the movie but I soon reminisced about two other horrible movies when I watched the commercial - namely Titanic and Pearl Harbor because the picture looked so familiar: The "heroine" (if I can really call her that) in the middle and her two "loved-ones" next to her - Pearl Harbor, anyone? In fact the love-story is a poor man's version of the one in Pearl Harbor and that one was already poor!

But as I like watching movies and analyzing their patterns I eventually decided to watch that rubbish. The movie begins with a doctor leaving his family for the military strike against Russia near the end of the Third Reich promising his wife that he will return. Now fast forward to Spring 1948: Germany lost the war and the allies & Russia captured the country and they both try to eliminate each other for world power and their ideologies: capitalism versus communism. Well, I guess you already know the story because you have to know it - The movie doesn't really bother with it so much and literally takes a dump on historical facts. The movie tries to depict the US government as angels and completely ignores the contribution of other countries during the airlift especially Great Britain who was responsible for nearly a quarter of the rations despite having their country bombed from a country that they're trying to help.

What was also pretty annoying were the historical remarks the people said in the movie like when the heroine's mother tells her daughter that Germany might be parted in two with a response like: "That's impossible!" Or when Stalin (where the director thought we just stick similarly looking mustache on the actor and he WILL look like him) says that Russia has to stop "Coca Cola" from spreading in Germany. Yeah right, if Stalin has ever said something like this. Or there is this one US pilot who tells his fellow of a bread with meat and everything possible in it - please! Burgers were invented WAY before that time.

In the movie you once see a map showing the airlines, funnily enough the map looks like it came straight out of a laser printer - in '48. The US general Lucius Clay who's main idea was to stay in Berlin is portrayed as a guy who is mean and grumpy and all the ideas he historically had like for example the airlift and improving on that idea came from the fictive character Phillip Turner, the love interest of the main actress which leads me to other aspects: Not enough African-American soldiers in the movie, there were like two in the whole film! Also relationships between US soldiers and German civilians was not allowed and by a revealing of such a relationship the US soldier would've been sent home. I don't want to say that there were no relationships at all but in this movie there was a couple that almost got married, If it wasn't for the death of the pilot in his fake CGI plane which looked terribly unrealistic especially the CGI fire!

If it wasn't enough all Americans in this movie spoke accent-free German although they only were in Germany for a couple of months - look I'm also American living in Germany for my whole life and even I have a little accent. Notably bad was also the child acting - the kids had like two expressions on their faces: "Normal-I-look-monotonous-like-a-robot" and grinning.

All in all the movie was boring from beginning to end moving way too slow especially the love story which was the same as the one in Pearl Harbor just with half of the dialogue. The sad part is that the movie was very successful - 8.97 millions watched the first part and 7.83 millions the second part the day after thus SAT1 receiving two consecutive wins in the overall market share and a whopping win in the commercial relevant group. But like I always think: The biggest pile of bull-crap is where the most flies go to.

The idea of making a miniseries about the Berlin airlift seemed to me as one of the more interesting German (post)war movies. It is a theme that has not been explored much as yet. However, the makers of this series stuffed it with clichés. It starts already with the DVD cover of the movie, which is a direct copy of the cover of 'Pearl Harbor'.

Luise Kielberg (Bettina Zimmermann) gets to hear that her husband, who is a doctor, (Ulrich Noethen) has died in Russia and after the war she's struggling to survive. She finds a job at the American base, gets to work for the coolest and highest ranking officer (Heino Ferch) in town, falls in love with 'm, gets pregnant, and all of a sudden her husband turns up again. Come on!!! We've seen this once too often. Heino Ferch and Ulrich Noethen play their role quite well; Bettina Zimmermann however never really seems to convince. For some reason it always seems she's somewhat too late in giving the right emotional reaction to the scenes. It just didn't work for me.

The action scenes with the planes and the air lift, we're sometimes exciting, more often not. Nasty things always seemed to happen to the same pilot.

Unless you're a big fan of WWII movies, I suggest you spend your money on something else: chocolate ice-cream brings a lot more satisfaction!

4 out 10!