Watch The Devil Makes Three For Free

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Gene Kelly stars in a movie where he does not sing or dance. Yet there is plenty of music used in the film. In glorious black and white, this film is filmed on location in post war Germany. While the plot has no real story behind it, the locations and destruction left behind after the war are interesting.Kelly is an American Soldier here who romances a young girl whose parents had died during the war in Allied Bomb raids. Then the naive Kelly finds out why the girl is interested in him. It is a sub-plot of stolen war gold which is being smuggled over the border in order to re-raise the Nazi party from the ashes of war.The filming of Adolf Hitler's retreats are filmed on location and some of them were torn down shortly after filming making this the last film to use these locales. The Italian actress playing an 18 year old German girl working in a cabaret in this would go on to more films but never achieve great fame, and commit suicide in 1969 at age 39. Her ending is tragic, but the young lady does okay here.

The concept of the movie is pretty interesting; The post WW II effects on Germany. Too bad that the movie chooses a completely uninteresting approach.The story seems to be going nowhere and for an hour it mostly consists out of continuing drivel between Gene Kelly and Pier Angeli. The movie shows some mystery and action tendencies but none of them really pushes through. It makes "The Devil Makes Three" an unsatisfying and also quite redundant movie to watch, despite its very interesting and also original concept. There really aren't that many movies that concentrate on post WW II Germany. Too bad that they couldn't come up with a more interesting story and approach of it.The movie does get much better and interesting in the end, when a new Nazi order comes in the story but there is nothing in the story before this that even hints to this plot-element. The movie as a whole therefor feels disjointed and the ending comes too late to safe the movie as a whole.Director Andrew Marton had more success working as a second unit director, with movies such as "Ben-Hur", "Kelly's Heroes" and "The Day of the Jackal".It definitely helps that the movie was obviously shot at location and in the early '50's, right after WW II. Germany was still in ruins for some parts and the movie uses this backdrop gratefully. It helps to make the movie look and feel realistic and it works obviously better than the normal fake- and studio work. All of the locations seem to be the real thing, including Hitler's Eagle's nest (The Kehlsteinhaus), that was near Berchtesgaden, which at the time of filming was subsequently used by the Allies as a military command post until 1960, when it was handed back to the State of Bavaria.Guess lots of people are having trouble with seeing Gene Kelly in such a serious role as this one but in all fairness, he pulls it off quite well. He shows that he also knew how to act, besides being normally mostly just a 'show-man' or entertainer. Pier Angeli also plays nicely but her character just isn't the most compelling one. At first you mostly hate her and she is irritating, in the second halve of the movie you're supposed to care about her. This approach just doesn't work out, at least not good enough.Not an awful movie but still an uninteresting and redundant one.6/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

There are many reasons to watch this movie: 1. Pier Angeli- this compelling beauty stirs a certain something in our hearts - at once familiar and then somehow mysterious.2. Gene Kelly- in one of his rare turns in a serious, non-singing, non-dancing part...I agree with another reviewer who says he was a showman not really an actor - - but he does a fair turn here.3. Historical- few people know that the Nazi movement did not die immediately after Hitler died. The besieged German people had not forgotten the horrors and were still susceptible to somber outlooks.4. Geo-Architectural- those pictures in the Eagle's Nest were spine-tinglingly eerie, if not thrilling to see since it has been apparently taken down. Other scenes in the German towns and countryside are vastly more interesting than so many other canned backdrops to which we are normally subjected.All in all, this film occupies its time well - it's not world-shaking, but to me, it will be unforgettable because of the former reasons - especially the historical and geo-architectural...but also, one of our few looks at the beauty of the co-star, the stunningly beautiful Pier Angeli.

I don't have much to add besides what others have commented, except to support what was said previously, that the filming locations in post-WWII Germany and Austria are the most interesting features in this film. Views of Munich and Saltzburg give a clear picture of the extent of the devastation that resulted from bombing raids at the end of the war. But for me, what I found the most interesting was the last scenes filmed at Berchesgarten in the ruins of Hitler's Eagle's Lair where the head of the Neo-Nazi organization seeks refuge after being chased by Gene Kelly et-al. This is the only movie I recall that showed this location before it was eradicated.