The British film industry of the 1950s has a reputation for production "cosy", inward-looking films, but here's one made with foreign talent, about foreigners. Dirk Bogarde is a former Dutch resistance fighter accused of killing a British soldier in post-war Germany. With the help of his girlfriend Mai Zetterling, he goes on the run and tries to prove his innocent.
It's an odd combination of Hitchcock with a Third Man background (there's even a subplot involving the sale of penicillin). Bogarde's performance occasionally slides into snobbishness and superiority which isn't ideal when telling a story about a poor chap who we want to like. Zetterling is very engaging and it's not a bad mystery, if a little unbelievable and contrived at times. It's not that much of a movie, though - there's little atmosphere of post-war Europe (despite some location photography), the characters aren't particularly interesting.
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