The Devil Makes Three (1952)

A Post-War Peek at the Bombed Out Germany and its Beleaguered and Confused Populace. Gene Kelly is Adequate in a Non-Singing-Dancing Role, but it is Piere Angelie that all Eyes are Transfixed.The Real Star is the On-Location Vista of the Snow-Capped Mountains, the Devastated Streets and Buildings, and Hitler's Home. There are some Poignant and Profound Scenes, like the one with the Family and Kids that moved into an Abandon Building. Angelie's Cynical Dialog of Loss and Circumstance, and the Musical Numbers are Interesting Satire.The Plot is an Average Account of Smuggling and Nazi Wannabees and Holder's On, but the Film doesn't manage much Suspense or Action. Overall Worth a Watch for the Aforementioned but the Movie Plays it Safe in a lot of ways.Gene Kelly's Detractors are Inconsiderate and Cruel. He won't Win any Awards for His Dramatics, but is No Better or Worse than His Second Tier Peers in that Department. There may be One Love Scene too many, and His Co-Star's Depression is Overwrought at times. Still this has its moments and is a Fine Production.

The Devil Makes Three was made as part of a deal that Gene Kelly made with MGM whereby he would work abroad to take advantage of tax rulings and would also get the go ahead from the studio to do his Invitation To The Dance, a project he longed cherished. All studios liked to keep their contract players even though during the age of television studios were reducing their payrolls. You didn't have a musical on tap, then MGM would slot you into a non-musical. Kelly had made a few of them for his studio before. A later film done in Great Britain, Crest Of A Wave, was part of this package as well.Nothing terribly special about The Devil Makes Three. Kelly is a serviceman and he's on leave in Germany and looking for a family that had sheltered him when he was shot down. He finds the daughter grown up to be Pier Angeli and she's pretty disillusioned with life singing in a cabaret now.But Army Intelligence has its eye on her and Kelly is contacted by Richard Rober and Richard Egan to pursue a love affair as if he needed any encouraging and keep an eye for her associates. Her associates turn out to be neo-Nazis. The best thing about The Devil Makes Three is the location cinematography in Munich, Salzburg, and most especially the winter scenes at Hitler's home away from home Berchtesgarden. Looking at those mountains had he not wanted a Gotterdaemerung ending to his Reich he could have made one nasty fight in those mountains that might have prolonged the European war for a year or two.It's a routine action adventure, Kelly was always a good actor and most people cite his role in Inherit The Wind as proof of that. And Pier Angeli has thought aura of tragedy that her real life was.

The film stands out because it chooses to look at the socio-political post-war Germany. It looks at the thin slice of the vanquished: the fate of beautiful orphaned girls in a society that has been reduced to poverty.The story-line is commendable, the plot average. If anything the charming Pier Angeli makes the film worth your time. The director switches the dialogue from English to German frequently at important moments, depriving much of the entertainment of the viewer who might not know German very well. This is a film that deserved subtitling where necessary. Gene Kelly is a poor actor, capable of giving good performances in musicals where dance supersedes drama. This film underscores this fact. Ironically, the songs and dances in the film are good but Kelly has nothing to do with them.

The same year (1952) that Gene Kelly would become immortal with his "Singing in the rain"-film he also made another movie that is one of his more obscure ones and probably one of the lost classics. Directed by Andrew Marton, a very dubious director who worked on "The longest day" but who also gave us the vehicle "Clarence, the cross-eyed lion" shows us a part of history that is mainly forgot. We are in Munich, 1947 and while the American troop^s seem to handle the new German way of living in a rather good way there are also those left who think the Third Reich can live on without their fuhrer. This costs money and they smuggled the gold to neighbourcountries (in this case Salzburg) for getting financied their new evil plans. Captain Jeff Elliot (Gene Kelly) who knows nothing about it wants to visit a German family Lehrt as they saved his life at the end of the war. Packed with Christmasgifts he stands before a bombed house and learns later that the family has been killed by American bombs, except the little girl Willie (Pier Angeli) but she is nowhere to be found. All pretty German girls seem to work in cabarets and that's where Kelly finds the girl. The meeting between the two is rather based on hated feelings (after all it were American bombs who killed Willie's parents) but Kelly is Kelly and they soon fall in love. By the question of Kelly what could the girl happy she answers that she'd like to visit Salzburg again. The captain thinks it's a small effort but knows nothing that he's driving a car that is full of smuggled gold, and of course as you can imagine the girl is innocent but she has the choice of being beaten by some German gestapopigs or obey them... This little classic (that seems to be forgotten by everyone) is a very nice film that has both its adventuredose, good acting (Kelly doesn't dance for once but proves he is a big actor anyway and Pier Angeli is gorgeous) and its historical worth (tons of locations are filmed in postwar Germany). A quite whole mystery why this film isn't more known as it's a brilliant movie that stands out from tons of mediocre films from that time