The Big Lift

The Big Lift
Directed by	George Seaton
Written by	George Seaton
Produced by	William Perlberg
Starring	Montgomery Clift Paul Douglas Cornell Borchers Bruni Löbel O.E. Hasse
Cinematography	Charles G. Clarke
Edited by	William H. Reynolds
Music by	Alfred Newman
Color process	Black and white
Production company	20th Century Fox
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date	April 26, 1950 (1950-04-26)
Running time	120 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$1.3 million[1][2]

The Big Lift is a 1950 American drama war film on location in the city of Berlin, Germany, that tells the story of "Operation Vittles", the 1948–49 Berlin Airlift, through the experiences of two U.S. Air Force sergeants played by Montgomery Clift and Paul Douglas.

The film was directed and written by George Seaton, and was released April 26, 1950, less than one year after the Soviet blockade of Berlin was lifted and airlift operations ceased. Because the film was shot in Berlin in 1949, as well as using newsreel footage of the actual airlift, it provides a contemporary glimpse of the post-war state of the city as its people struggled to recover from the devastation wrought by World War II.