The Man Between (1953)

When an English girl (Claire Bloom) arrives in post war Berlin to visit her brother (Geoffrey Toone), she notices something strange going on involving her German sister in law (Hildegard Knef) and a mysterious man (James Mason) from the Eastern sector of Berlin. Her suspicions are just the beginning of her involvement in the rancorous politics of East and West Berlin. While not on the level of his masterful THE THIRD MAN, director Carol Reed does for post war Berlin what he did for post war Vienna in his 1949 classic. The first portion of the film is a mystery while the second half is a thriller that takes us through a nightmare vision of East Berlin as our protagonists attempt to make their way across to the western sector. Mason's been down this road before with Reed in ODD MAN OUT, just substitute Ireland for Germany and you get an idea of what THE MAN BETWEEN is. Mason's German accent wavers, Bloom is lovely but it's Hildegard Knef whose presence lends some authenticity to the proceedings. In her performance, you get a genuine feeling of East/West tensions immediately following the war. The excellent score is by John Addison (TOM JONES) and the effective cinematography courtesy of Desmond Dickinson (there's a marvelous shot of a snow covered auto with eyes made by windshield wipers moving like a dreadful monster down a street). With Ernst Schroder and Aribert Wascher.