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
Review of The Devil Makes Three
