DKosty123 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.

Boba_Fett1138 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/

tdemos The closing scenes of this film were shot at the ruins of the Berghoff, which was Hitler's actual residence in Berchtesgaden, most famous for the huge picture window that framed a picture-perfect view of the mountains of Germany and Austria. Since the actual building was torn down by the post-war German government during the 1950's (they were afraid of it becoming a Nazi shrine), this film represents a rare, motion picture view of what the site actually looked like during that period.The location is now the site of the luxury Hotel- InterContinental Berchtesgaden and visitors can still see the same view of the mountains that Hitler built for himself."The Eagle's Nest", located nearby, was the informal name given to the Kehlsteinhaus, or the Fuhrer's Tea house, custom built for Hitler at the top of Kehlstein Mountain during the 1930's. The site survived the war and is now a tourist attraction owned by the local government and features a road carved into the shear rock face of the mountain and a deep tunnel with a brass elevator that takes visitors to the top. It was said that Hitler didn't like heights and only visited the Kehlsteinhaus a few times during his lifetime. Contrary to popular belief, the "Eagle's Nest" is not believed to be featured in this movie.Until recent NATO reductions-in-force, the Americans had many military recreational facilities in Berchtesgaden which have since been turned over to the German government.

dkbs The film's plot is solid yarn but not much above average. What makes the film interesting are two things: First Pier Angeli as the girl. And more than that, that the film gives a strong impression of how Germany looked like during the first years after WW II. There is a very atmospheric photography which shows some original locations in Munich and Bavaria: the Bavarian landscape, some villages, the post war Munich. Beyond it the film focuses on the everyday life of the German people more than other films with a similar topic, and it does it in an interesting way: you see some clothes, cars or flats of that time for example and some of the cabarets, clubs ore Night Shows, which obviously where quite typical for the post war era in Germany (and can be found in some other films about post war Germany ). And by this "The Devil Makes Three" manages to be  a nice contemporary document along the way.