The film – parts of which were shot on the banks of the Danube at the same time as The Third Man – takes place in occupied Vienna, where International Patrols, motorized police patrols consisting of four soldiers, an American, a Russian, a Frenchman and an Englishman, are assigned to patrol the four sectors of the city. The three Westerners and the Soviet come into conflict when an Austrian prisoner of war held in the USSR escapes shortly before his official liberation and goes into hiding at his wife’s flat, with the GPU hot on his heels. […]
Against all the expectations of its producers, Die Vier im Jeep unleashed a hefty controversy at the Cannes Film Festival in 1951, which for the first time was attended by an important delegation from the East. At the request of the Soviets, the film, originally programmed for the opening session of the festival, was not shown until the next day and drew an official protest from the Russian delegation, which included the director Vsevolod Poudovkin and the actor Nikolay Cherkasov. During a public discussion with Praesens, they accused Lindtberg of insulting the Red Army through the character of the Russian patrolman. “Lindtberg is inciting Anti-Soviet hate” was the headline of a leftist French newspaper to the astonishment of those who were responsible for the film, who had hoped to bring a neutral message of conciliation.
In fact, the film had gone to extreme lengths in trying to be impartial, but whereas the Western soldiers on the screen spontaneously evoke sympathy, right down to the details of their private lives, the depiction of the Russian, tormented and unpredictable, reflected the West’s visceral fear in the face of a little-known great power and its disapproval of Russian police arbitrariness, exercised with a total disregard for human rights. […] The avalanche of international prizes which followed nevertheless had a strong political flavour, such as David O. Selznick’s Silver Laurel Award, the One World Award from New York, or the Golden Bear of the Berlin Film Festival.

Hervé Dumont