The Man Between

Film noir fans admire English director Carol Reed largely for his trio of brilliant crime films in the late 1940’s — Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), The Third Man (1949) — but Reed infused other films with his noir style too, most notably The Man Between starring James Mason as Ivo Kern, a former Nazi attorney trying to break free from the postwar underground of East Berlin prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall. Kern’s former wife Bettina (Hildegard Knef) is now married to British military officer Martin Mallison (Geoffrey Toone), who is temporarily residing in Berlin to oversee supplies to the city. Conflict arises when Martin’s sister Susanne (Claire Bloom) arrives for a visit and becomes suspicious of Bettina, charmed by Ivo, and ultimately mixed up in a kidnapping plot by East German smugglers connected to both of them. While Ivo attempts to rescue Susanne so he can convince the West Berlin authorities that he’s a responsible citizen, he also develops feelings for her that will change the direction of his life. It must be said that the film’s weak spot is its script (even Reed said so while filming) which suffers from logic flaws, delayed revelations, and a general lack of unity, but on every other front The Man Between excels, including the performances (the chemistry between Mason and Bloom is highly convincing, including off-screen) and, most of all, the extraordinary atmosphere. Berlin’s bombed out city blocks serve as a background for every exterior shot, and Reed does a nice job contrasting East (dining in front of a Lenin mural) with West (dancing in an enormous, glitzy nightclub). Cinematographer Dickinson shoots extensively with Dutch angles to amplify the city’s chaos and ruination, and Addison’s score employs woodwinds, timpani, and a mournful saxophone that lingers over “The End.”