THE DEVIL MAKES THREE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 717, 10 April 1953, Page 18

THE DEVIL MAKES THREE

CCASIONALLY the skill of the director. does the trick, at other times it may be the hypnosis of the screen itself-or perhaps as the arteries harden, critical standards soften upwhatever it is, I have frequently found myself enjoying on film a thriller which in cold print would have provoked for me not the question Whodunit? but rather Why do it? > The Devil Makes Three is a fair sample of that kind. of picture. It’s the story of am .American flying officer «Gene Kelly) who makes a sentimental pilgrimage to Germany to visit a family which gave him shelter when he was shot down over the Reich during the raids of 1944. He discovers that the parents were ‘killed in a later raid and that the daughter (now a cabaret hostess) is the unwilling accomplice of a smuggling syndicate. It transpires (there is no other word for it) that the smugglers are none other than the underground rump of the Nazi Party. In a series of exciting chases down the Munich autobahn and up over the ruins of Berchtesgaden, gallant Major Kelly (with the help of the U.S. military police and the German civil authorities) frustrates the bad hats, liquidates théir new fuhrer, marries the girl and lives happily, etc., etc. It’s all pretty trite, but it) would have. seemed a lot triter without Gene Kelly’s pleasant ingenuous manner and a sensitive performance by Pier Angeli. A relatively recent arrival in Hollywood, she hasn’t had the bloom groomed off yet.