Night People

Berlin, the early years of the Cold War. The Soviet side kidnaps a young American private. The private is the son of an influential American businessman, and the father comes straight to Berlin. The Soviets want an exchange: in return they want an elderly German couple they accuse of treason. The one who has to decide is the American intelligence officer Steve Van Dyke, and both sides are pressing him. Nunnally Johnson had worked for years as a writer and a producer; this was his first job as a director. The film was shot in Berlin, in the real streets of the divided city, and that footage has the value of a document now. Gregory Peck plays the officer. The telling shows neither side as clean: on the American side too there is a machine that calculates and spends people with the tip of a pen. The result is unusually cold for the spy films of the period.