While it’s nowhere near as inventive or memorable as
The Third Man (1949), Andrew Marton’s
The Devil Makes Three contains a similar narrative thread as Carol Reed’s masterpiece: an American returns to postwar Europe in search of an old friend who’s gotten mixed up with the criminal underworld. In this case, the American is navigation instructor Jeff Eliot (Gene Kelly) and the corrupted friend is Wilhelmina Lehrt (Pier Angeli) whose late parents (“a kraut family”) sheltered Eliot from the Nazis during the war. All grown up now, Wilhelmina is embittered by the war and her poverty, singing in a sleazy cabaret and smuggling black market goods just to survive. Having fallen in love with Wilhelmina, Eliot’s disturbed by her lifestyle, even more so when he learns her boss at the club, Heisemann (a perfectly cast Claus Clausen), is leading a Nazi revivalist movement. Scenes of gritty violence, like the opener in which a fur-clad woman is gunned down by masked bikers in a phone booth in the middle of nowhere, alternate with dramatic settings — snow-capped mountains, bombed-out city blocks, Salzburg churches –that give the film a unique majesty. An extraordinary final chase sequence, which leads to some kind of neo-Nazi motorcycle race at Hitler’s vacation home in Berchtesgarden (complete with “Gestapo Headquarters” sign), enthralls the viewer through deep focus shots and low-key lighting, not to mention Clausen’s creepy performance in his long, black leather coat a la
The Matrix (1999).
