The Devil Makes Three (1952): Gene Kelly in a B Film

Gene Kelly ticks off many boxes with his starring role in The Devil Makes Three. Yes, it’s a B film (noir), and it is my entry for the Second Annual “Favorite Stars in B Movies” Blogathon, hosted by Brian at Films from Beyond the Time Barrier. Gene Kelly is one of my favorites, and I have enjoyed finding and seeing films that don’t showcase the talents for which he is most famous, that is, dancing and singing. But The Devil Makes Three is not just a B film noir that happens to star an actor famous for his dancing and singing: It’s a Gene Kelly B noir Christmas rubble film—all rolled into one!

Viewers know right away that they are watching something from the postwar period because the film starts with the following acknowledgment: “Appreciation is expressed to the Office of the High Commissioner of Germany, the United States Army Military Police Corps., and the Munich City Police for their cooperation while filming this motion picture in Germany and Austria.” After the opening credits, a voice-over narrator, Colonel James Terry (and one of the characters in the film), explains that the story takes place in Munich, the city where Adolf Hitler founded the Nazi Party. The events of the film take place in 1947, and they are based on several case studies of ongoing criminal activity and espionage.

The narrative starts with a car driving through a snow-covered landscape and swerving to a stop by a phone booth. A woman in a fur coat jumps out to make a phone call. She speaks urgently in German. Men on motorcycles and wearing masks and heavy leather coats drive up and stop near the phone booth. One of them pulls out a gun and shoots and kills the woman trying to make a phone call. They drive away, leaving her body in the snow. This sequence sets up the mystery that Captain Jeff Eliot (played by Kelly) walks into innocently.

Eliot is on leave for two weeks during the Christmas season. He lands in Munich hoping to spend his time off with the Lehrt family, who helped him escape from the Nazis. He has a soft spot for the daughter Wilhelmina (played by Pier Angeli), who Eliot nicknamed Willie. She was only fifteen when Eliot escaped from Germany, and he believes that he will find her and her family at their home, alive and well. But the realities of war dash those hopes. The Lehrt home is flattened, and Willie is nowhere to be found. Eliot eventually finds her in the Silhouette cabaret with the help of Captain Parker, who knows all the nightclubs and brothels in town. He tells Eliot that hunger forces almost all women to extremes.

(This article about The Devil Makes Three contains some spoilers.)

Eliot wants to thank Willie by treating her to Christmas. She tells him about one Christmas in Salzburg with family friends. At Willie’s suggestion, Eliot rents a car to take her to Salzburg, but the auto rental agency is a front for a smuggling ring. The Take Ten Snack Bar at the Austrian-German border, where Eliot and Willie stop on the road, is also a front, but this one is a front for the U.S. authorities, including Captain Parker, investigating smuggling and spies. Their car is searched, which turns up camera lenses, hypodermic needles, and assorted watch springs, all rather petty items. The U.S. authorities replace everything and allow the car to continue.

At this point, Eliot is unaware that the car is searched, but it isn’t long before he is brought in for questioning and informed that he could contribute to the investigation. At first, Eliot remains loyal to Willie, but some of her actions cause him to doubt her intentions, and he agrees to help the investigation. The U.S. military and domestic German authorities have uncovered information about a smuggling ring based in the Silhouette cabaret and likely connected to Nazis still hiding in Europe. As Colonel James Terry told Eliot during his questioning, the Nazis had a plan before the war even ended to use the gold they collected during the war (mostly from victims of their concentration camps) to finance the rebuilding of the Third Reich.

The ensuing story intertwines all the various plot threads: the romance between Eliot and Willie, the investigation into the smuggling ring operating out of the Silhouette cabaret, and the hunt for Nazis remaining in Europe. Much of it was filmed on location in Germany, amid the ruins of the postwar period—and hence the film’s categorization (one of many) as a rubble film. For example, when Captain Jeff Eliot tries to find the Lehrt family at their home address, he finds the house and the neighborhood in ruins. Later, he and Willie walk from the Silhouette cabaret to her apartment through the ruins of her neighborhood so that they can get reacquainted. A spectacular chase scene near the end of the film ends in the ruins of Adolf Hitler’s home in Berchtesgaden, a site that was destroyed by the German government not long after filming was completed on The Devil Makes Three. The film is a history lesson, too.

I did some research about the film a long time ago and already knew that The Devil Makes Three had been filmed on location in postwar Germany. But the research I did recently yielded even more information about the on-location shooting. Visit the Three Movie Buffs website for more information by clicking here.

Black Hand (1950), a film I wrote about for the first Favorite Stars in B Movies Blogathon in 2023, makes more use of Kelly’s physicality and even of his singing ability. Kelly doesn’t dance or sing in The Devil Makes Three, but there is one curious nod to his dancing abilities. Willie and Jeff Eliot stop for a break at the Take Ten Snack Bar on the Austrian-German border. The snack bar features a jukebox and swing dancing. Willie mentions that she doesn’t think she could ever learn to swing-dance. Eliot tells her, “Sure you could. All you need is a good hard hit on the head.”

Click here to see my article about Gene Kelly in Black Hand.

What to make of this comment? Aside from the association of dancing with Gene Kelly, this exchange is odd—until Willie and Eliot arrive in Salzburg and do a little bit of sightseeing on their own. They stop in a beer hall and watch two men folk dancing. The men engage in a mock fight over a girl during which they slap each other on the head. Willie repeats Jeff’s line from the Take Ten Snack Bar, but the sequence on the whole seems to be more of a way to introduce American audiences to folk traditions in Austria than a nod to Gene Kelly’s talents. Otherwise, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher.

But if you are a fan of Gene Kelly’s musicals and his dance numbers, as I am, you will probably still recognize some of his signature moves in The Devil Makes Three. They are not as prominently displayed as they are in Black Hand, but they are there nonetheless. The best examples occur during Jeff Eliot’s investigation of the rental car in Salzburg late at night. He hears footsteps approaching outside the garage where the car is stored, and he uses his whole body in dancer-like fashion to show his alarm.

I enjoyed The Devil Makes Three, and I have seen it several times, but there is just one more little detail that I notice every time I see the film, and that’s the difference in ages between the two leads. Gene Kelly was thirty-nine when the film was released, and Pier Angeli was only nineteen. Their romance always strikes me as age inappropriate, even though nothing is mentioned about Kelly’s/Eliot’s age. But that still means that Eliot met fifteen-year-old Willie when he was thirty-six. Not so easy to ignore in 2024, and it shouldn’t have been easy to ignore in 1952 either. And age factors into Eliot’s occupation: Kelly strikes me as too old to play a captain in the U.S. air force (although I have nothing really to base this impression on).

The Devil Makes Three is many things: a B movie, a film noir, a rubble film, a Gene Kelly movie. It takes place during the Christmas holidays and could be called a Christmas movie. But one category it cannot be put in is musical, which is the category one usually associates with Gene Kelly. Once again, Kelly is taken out of his usual milieu, where he is dancing and singing, and plunked into a B film. But his physicality still shines through, especially when he cannot use dialogue to get his point across.

This article about The Devil Makes Three is my entry for the Second Annual “Favorite Stars in B Movies” Blogathon, hosted by Brian at filmsfrombeyond.com. Click on each link in the list below for day-by-day access to participants’ blogs. The list is updated each day of the blogathon:

◊ Day One, April 12, 2024

◊ Day Two, April 13, 2024

◊ Day Three, April 14, 2024

September 19, 1952, release date  •  Directed by Andrew Marton  •  Screenplay by Jerry Davis  •  Based on a story by Lawrence P. Bachmann  •  Music by Rudolph G. Kopp  •  Edited by Ben Lewis  •  Cinematography by Václav Vích

Gene Kelly as Captain Jeff Eliot  •  Pier Angeli as Wilhelmina (Willie) Lehrt  •  Richard Rober as Colonel James Terry  •  Richard Egan as Captain Parker  •  Charles Gordon Howard as Lieutenant Farris  •  Michael Tellering as Detective Lieutenant Ernst Haltmann  •  Wilfried Seyferth as Hansig, owner of the Silhouette cabaret  •  Otto Gebühr as Mr. Nolder  •  Gertrude Wolle as Mrs. Nolder  •  Heinrich Grether as Mr. Keigler, Lehrt family friend  •  Annie Rosar as Mrs. Keigler, Lehrt family friend  •  Charlotte Fleming as the woman shot in the phone booth  •  Harold Benedict as the sergeant at the airport  •  Bum Krüger as Oberlitz, owner of the car rental agency  •  Sepp Rist as the customs official  •  Claus Clausen as Heisemann  •  Margot Hielscher as the Silhouette cabaret singer  •  Iván Petrovitch as Sigmund Neffs  •  Claus Benton Lombard as the waiter at the Take Ten Snack Bar  •  Ruth Megary as the waitress at the Take Ten Snack Bar

Distributed by Loew’s, Inc.  •  Produced by Metro Goldwyn Mayer

Marlowe (2022)

I approached Marlowe with a mixture of anticipation and skepticism. The anticipation came from the fact that I am a fan of Philip Marlowe and of Raymond Chandler’s stories and novels about him. But I didn’t think I could expect this film to live up to the others that have been produced before. For one thing, it is a 2022 color production that probably wouldn’t fare well compared to the shadowy black-and-white films from the 1940s and 1950s. And this 2022 color production isn’t even based on Raymond Chandler’s work; it is based on a novel by Benjamin Black: The Black-Eyed Blonde.

But I am happy to say that I enjoyed the film plot’s twists and turns, so reminiscent of film noir. Raymond Chandler’s novels are plot-twisty, too. He sometimes assumes that if Marlowe notices something, a small detail, something barely out of the ordinary, readers will notice and remember it, too. But I didn’t find the plot of the film as complicated as a Chandler novel. I had plenty of time to concentrate on Liam Neeson and his performance in the role of Philip Marlowe. I like Neeson, and he is good at projecting a world-weary private detective. But he’s older than the Philip Marlowe in Chandler’s novels, and I kept coming back to that fact.

The opening credits appear over the start of the day for Philip Marlowe. Over a radio broadcast that he is listening to at home, he and viewers hear the news of Hitler’s views about Poland and Czechoslovakia. Type on-screen announces that it is 1939 in Bay City, California. The narrative starts with Marlowe now in his office turning away from the window and lighting a cigarette. His secretary announces a client, Mrs. Clare Cavendish, who wants Marlowe to find her lover Nico Peterson. Peterson has disappeared without saying goodbye.

This opening sequence with Clare Cavendish is slow-paced. The first time that I saw the film, I was afraid the opening sequence might indicate that the entire film would be boring, but I realized afterward, after Marlowe takes the case and he starts his investigation in earnest, that the right word is languid. The dialogue between Marlowe and Cavendish is languid, with plenty of room for innuendo and mild flirtation—and for questions answered with questions. The kind of conversation that probably would intrigue any private detective.

(This article about Marlowe contains some spoilers.)

Marlowe starts his investigation at Nico Peterson’s last known address. The house is empty, with newspapers collecting. Peterson’s neighbor shows up and tells Marlowe about Mexicans looking for Nico Peterson, too. He uses derogatory terms to describe them, which is similar to how characters would talk to Marlowe in Chandler’s novels. It isn’t long before Marlowe discovers that Peterson has died. He was hit and killed on Bay Canyon Drive, outside the Corbata Club, by a driver who did not stay on the scene. Marlowe checks the autopsy report at Bay City Police Headquarters, but he still has questions. He goes to see Joe Green, a homicide detective who is a friend of Marlowe’s. Green tells Marlowe not to pursue the case: Nico’s sister Lynn identified the body, the death was ruled an accident, and that was the end of it—but not for Marlowe, of course.

He eventually gets Bernie Ohls (a familiar name to Chandler/Marlowe fans) involved in the case because Nico Peterson’s sister Lynn has been kidnapped by the Mexicans. Marlowe feels responsible: He and Lynn were at Nico’s house when the Mexicans appeared, knocked out Marlowe, and took Lynn. Bernie works for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), and he has a wider jurisdiction than Joe Green—and he isn’t willing to let a kidnapping go, even if it means opening the case on Nico Peterson and treating it as a homicide instead of a kidnapping. Bernie Ohls is the one to tell Marlowe that LAPD found Lynn Peterson’s body. Marlowe knows she is dead when Ohls says, “She’ll wait till we get there.”

As the investigation proceeds, Marlowe meets several characters who have secrets and ulterior motives. Marlowe talks to Floyd Hanson, the manager of the Corbata Club, who doesn’t seem at all interested in Nico Peterson or his unfortunate death. He wants to keep investigators out of the club because it caters to the rich and all their vices, including illicit drugs shipped from Mexico and underage boys and girls. Lou Hendricks wants to find Nico Peterson because of the Mexican connection. Nico has some valuable merchandise that belongs to Hendricks, and he isn’t willing to let it go. The Mexicans looking for Nico are hit men. They are not so much interested in Nico as they are interested in what he is stealing from Hendricks. All the pieces are interconnected, and Marlowe has to uncover the connections.

Except for Liam Neeson’s age, he makes a great Philip Marlowe. He portrays the right amount of world-weariness and chivalry to be convincing. If my calculations are correct, Neeson was sixty-nine years old during filming, and that’s about twice the age of the fictitious Philip Marlowe. The actors and the screenwriter are well aware of Neeson’s age. Neeson as Marlowe even says out loud during a fight with two adversaries that he is “getting too old for this.” Detective Joe Green comments on Marlowe’s age, too, and wonders if Marlowe keeps working because he doesn’t have a police officer’s pension. I would still love to see Neeson again in the role of Philip Marlowe. Would his age be even more noticeable, and would that be a negative? All I can say is that I enjoyed his portrayal this time around, and I would see another Marlowe film with Neeson in the lead.

Marlowe is based on the novel The Black-Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black, which I have read. The second half of the novel and the second half of the film are so different from one another that if I had seen only the second half of the film, I would have found it hard to believe the two were connected. I enjoyed the film so much more than the novel, which doesn’t happen very often, although I find it happens much more with film noir and neo-noir than it does with other types of films. I thought the screenplay was much more clever than the novel, although it wasn’t necessarily any truer to Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe. In fact, the details that I really appreciated had little to do with Chandler’s novels. The literary references sprinkled throughout the film’s narrative were wonderful, as they would be for anyone who enjoys literature, and Chandler in particular, as much as I do.

Literary References

Here are some examples of the film’s literary references.

◊ The first time that Philip Marlowe meets Dorothy Quincannon, Clare Cavendish’s mother (played with great aplomb by Jessica Lange), she is on horseback, and she wants to know what his business is with her daughter. She asks him if he is “looking for pearls,” a sly reference to “Pearls Are a Nuisance,” a short story written by Raymond Chandler (published in April 1939 in Dime Detective, so Dorothy Quincannon could have heard of it, could have read it). She had a private investigator find out about Marlowe, and she tells him a little of what she learned. Dorothy and the screenwriters are clever: What she recounts is a mix of details from Chandler’s private life (for example, he drank himself out of a good job in the oil business, had a bad experience in World War I) and Philip Marlowe’s backstory (the character Marlowe used to work for the LAPD as an investigator).

◊ When Philip Marlowe meets Dorothy Quincannon again, this time at the Garden of Allah Hotel, he catches her in the middle of instructing the waiter on making tea properly: “When you make tea, make tea. When you make water, make water.” This is a paraphrase from Ulysses by James Joyce (“When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I makes water I makes water.”), and Philip Marlowe points out to Dorothy Quincannon that she is stealing from Joyce. It is an opportunity for the Irish director/screenwriter, Neil Jordan, to put words into an Irish actor’s mouth by pointing out the literary theft of an Irish author’s words. (I found it doubly clever.)

◊ Marlowe tells Nico Peterson, “My determination for some time has been that reports of your death were greatly exaggerated.” The quote by Mark Twain actually reads, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” Most people (me included) remember it the way that Marlowe says it.

Differences Between Marlowe in the Film and Marlowe in Chandler’s Novels

Philip Marlowe in the film isn’t exactly like Marlowe in Chandler’s novels, and I can’t resist pointing out some examples. Others will probably notice them, too.

◊ In the film, Marlowe has a secretary named Hilda, but he doesn’t have a secretary in any of the novels. He has an empty antechamber outside his office that clients can sit in while waiting to see him.

◊ The film includes more guns and violence. There is a scene where Philip Marlowe and Cedric use long guns (are some of them machine guns?) to kill Floyd Hanson and Lou Hendricks.

◊ The violence is more explicit. For example, viewers see Nico Peterson’s head squashed at the start of the film, when everyone still thinks the dead body is Nico Peterson’s.

◊ I already mentioned that Liam Neeson is older than Philip Marlowe, but it’s a difference that is very hard to ignore, even though I enjoyed the film and Neeson’s performance as much as I did. Production on the film was two months starting in November 2021, which would make Neeson sixty-nine years old at the time of filming, about twice Marlowe’s age, give or take.

◊ Philip Marlowe uses profanity in the film; he doesn’t in the novels.

It’s too bad that Marlowe didn’t garner more positive reviews when it was first released. I guess no one else enjoyed the literary allusions as much as I did. Screenwriter Jordan even has Marlowe finding a copy of The Elements of Style, a writer’s style reference, in Nico Peterson’s home and sitting down to read it. It matches nothing in The Black-Eyed Blonde, nothing in Chandler’s novels. If I ever have the chance to meet Neil Jordan, I would really like to ask him, “Why The Elements of Style?” Because I have my own story to tell about it!

September 24, 2022 (San Sebastián International Film Festival), February 15, 2023 (United States), release dates  •  Directed by Neil Jordan  •  Screenplay by William Monahan, Neil Jordan  •  Based on the novel The Black-Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black  •  Music by David Holmes  •  Edited by Mick Mahon  •  Cinematography by Xavi Giménez

Liam Neeson as Philip Marlowe  •  Diane Kruger as Clare Cavendish  •  Jessica Lange as Dorothy Quincannon  •  Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Cedric  •  Ian Hart as Joe Green  •  Colm Meaney as Bernie Ohls  •  Danny Huston as Floyd Hanson  •  Alan Cumming as Lou Hendricks  •  Daniela Melchior as Lynn Peterson  •  François Arnaud as Nico Peterson  •  Seána Kerslake as Amanda Toxteth  •  Patrick Muldoon as Richard Cavendish

Distributed by Metropolitan Filmexport (France), Briarcliff Entertainment, Open Road Films  •  Produced by Parallel Films, Hills Productions, Davis Films