Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

ada the leading man is my tpye

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

mcannady1 I first saw this unique film not long ago and was not surprised that it was superb. Given James Mason's wonderful and heart-wrenching performance and the young and naive Claire Bloom's great love for his character Ivo Kern, the film had a great recipe for success -- To all of these wonderful elements I have to mention the wonderful talents of Carol Reed's superb film-making. The viewer is willingly drawn into each and every scene of the film. The soul-stirring music inter-twined with the recreation of the principals watching opera at leisure is soon found to be more deceptive than it appears to be.The young and lovely Susanne (Bloom) who is very naive arrives in war-torn Berlin to visit her brother Martin (Toome) who is in the Military and his lovely wife Bettina (Neff). From the very start Susanne begins to have a concern that her sister-in-law's appearance of anguish and worry may be an indication of her having a dangerous affair. The beautiful Bettina appears to be sorrowing in secret and there is a boy of 11 or 12 who cycles back and forth from the airport to Martin and Bettina's home. In the background we hear soul-stirring music. Later the music is inter-twined with opera music, but the tension level increases as it is soon evident that war-torn Berlin is enshrouded with danger.Susanne meets Ivo Kern who is soon revealed to have been Bettina's husband originally. He had been incorrectly reported dead; hence Martin's marriage to Bettina. Susanne begins to suspect that Ivo was Bettina's source of worry. Ivo had been a black-market lawyer and was planning to reform in recent years. When Ivo invites Susanne to go skating, Bettina appears concerned. This could be rightfully so, for some dangerous former or newly acquired alliances could prove perilous to him and his family and friends.Susanne and Bettina along with her brother Martin are drawn into a plot which endangers Bettina and Ivo. Susanne's naiveté may be a an endangerment to the principals, which also worries the young boy on the bicycle. In his cycles back and forth, he gathers information for which Ivo pays him. However, The boy is soon worried about his good friend Ivo which is evident by his constant cycling back and forth.We soon find that Susanne makes an irretrievable error along the way.The plot thickens when Susanne is mistaken for Bettina and is kidnapped. In helping to rescue Susanne, Ivo finds himself falling in love with her. Susanne returns his affection, but worries about new and frightening developments.... She had formerly mistrusted her new friend, but was now fearful for his safety.As the story builds to a perilous denouement, every scene is important; every character's actions adds to the heart-stopping suspense. To avoid a Spoiler approaching, I will stop here.My assessment of the story is an even 10 for cast, content, etc. Under Carol Reed's skillful direction the story is unforgettable.

James Hitchcock Some purists would insist that film noir is a uniquely American genre, but in my view the term is equally appropriate to describe a number of British crime and espionage dramas, and indeed some continental European ones, such as Clouzot's "Les Diaboliques". Among the leading British directors who made what can be regarded as films noirs were Robert Hamer, director of "It Always Rains on Sunday" and "The Long Memory", and Carol Reed, whose work in the genre included "Odd Man Out", "The Third Man" and "The Man Between". It is noteworthy that all three of those films contain the word "man" in the title, because noir tended to be a male-dominated genre. There were occasional exceptions, such as "Double Indemnity", in which a female character takes on equal prominence with the male lead, but the general pattern is for a single male character to be at the centre of the film, with the female ones (and subsidiary male ones) defined in terms of their relationship to him. I think that this pattern holds good in "The Man Between", although Claire Bloom's character Suzanne Mallison may have more screen time, it is Ivo Kern, the "man between" himself, who is the real focus of the story.Like "The Third Man", the action takes place in a post-war European capital, in this case Berlin rather than Vienna. (During the Cold War Berlin, the "divided city", was to become a standard setting for any thriller with an espionage theme; "The Man Between" reminded me of another great British noir with an East Berlin setting, "The Spy who Came in from the Cold"; Bloom also appeared in that film). Suzanne files into the city from London to visit her older brother Martin, a doctor with the British Army Medical Corps, and his German wife Bettina. She meets Kern, a rather mysterious acquaintance of Bettina, who now appears to be working for the East German authorities. Despite Bettina's warning that Kern is not to be trusted, the naïve young Suzanne finds herself becoming attracted to him, and allows herself to be caught up in his dubious activities; as a result she is kidnapped and smuggled into East Berlin, leading to a tense finale in which she and Kern have to escape back to the West. (In the early fifties, before the building of the Berlin Wall, the East/West frontier was rather more porous than it was to become in the sixties and seventies, but crossing it was still difficult for anyone who had aroused suspicion or fallen foul of the authorities). A common noir characteristic was an air of moral doubt and uncertainty, and this is certainly present in "The Man Between". Politically, the distinctions are clear-cut; East Germany is an oppressive, Big Brother- style police state, dominated by ubiquitous huge portraits of Stalin and Ulbricht, and those Germans who oppose the Communist system are shown in a heroic light, such as Olaf Kestner, a West Berliner who helps refugees escape from the East. (Kern makes use of Suzanne in a failed attempt to arrest Kestner). The moral ambiguity comes in the portrayal of Kern himself, who is not simply shown as a villain. Kern was formerly an idealistic young lawyer who wished to defend the innocent and the 'rights of man'. His idealism, however, was shattered by the rise of Nazism and by his witnessing, and even being forced to participate in, Nazi atrocities. His faith in human nature gone, he turned to crime and became an associate of the East German secret service, although he has no belief in Communist ideology. He is, however, still capable of remorse, both for his past and for his present actions, and wishes to return to the West, where he hopes to atone for his criminal past. He is a complex, tormented figure, and James Mason here gives one of his finest performances, bringing out the various sides of Kern's nature. Bloom, in only her second film after "Limelight", looks radiant as Suzanne, and Hildegard Knef is good as Bettina, a woman who may also have guilty secrets in her past. Knef was herself German, as indeed were all those actors playing German characters, with the exception of Mason. (This was the second film in 1953 in which Mason played a German; the first had been "The Desert Rats" in which he played General Rommel). American noirs were often marked by dramatic black-and-white photography, and "The Man Between" follows this tradition with some striking shots of the snow-covered, war-ruined city. I would not rate this film quite as highly as "The Third Man", one of the greatest British films of the immediate post-war period, but it is certainly a distinguished effort. More than a mere thriller, it also asks some pertinent questions about human nature and gives us a memorable psychological portrait of a man haunted by guilt. 8/10A goof. Kern declares his belief in trial by jury, implying that it had been abolished by the Nazis. In fact, jury trial had been a feature of the legal system of Wilhelmine Germany but was abolished under the Weimar Republic in 1924, nearly a decade before the Nazis came to power, and has never been restored by any German government since, except for a brief period in Bavaria. It is a common Anglo-Saxon view that jury trial is an essential feature of democracy, but this opinion is not always shared by Continental Europeans.

st-shot Carol Reed keeps the post-war intrigue alive for the most part with his Odd Man Out lead James Mason in this trifle uneven and occasionally slow suspense film that strongly resembles the director's magnificent Third Man.Londoner Sussane Mallison (Claire Bloom) visits her serviceman brother and his wife in war torn Berlin. It isn't long before she suspects Bettina (Hildergard Neff) her sister in law of some type of deception. When she meets the mysterious Ivo Kern she is drawn into the action further, conflicted by the fact he is an extortionist and she is romantically drawn to him.Reed does a good job of keeping the audience in the dark for a good deal of the film with Mason and Neff both convincingly ambiguous and Bloom as innocent and confused as Holly Martins. The devastated Berlin backdrop with the ubiquitous visage of Stalin in the Eastern sector provide grim atmospherics with cinematographer Dietrich Dikisson ably filling in for Reed regular DP Robert Krasker.The editing which is a touch sloppy occasionally bogs the story down and the music score at times can be torturous to listen to but Mason's tragic turn as the cornered Kern never allows the film to fall into bathos for too long. He is the German version of the angry young man that would permeate film throughout the fifties and into the sixties and as The Man Between he is an eloquent spokesman in conveying the devastating disappointment of a generation betrayed by its government.

annalbin-1 This moody, atmospheric piece holds up extremely well (maybe even better than when it was first released). The two stars, James Mason and Claire Bloom, are fabulous and their chemistry is palpable, especially in the last quarter of the film. As other comments have mentioned, just the moral ambiguity coupled with the physical backdrop of Berlin shortly after the war enhances the story tremendously. Mason delivers another complex performance, by turns charming and sardonic, quickly turning to cynical and dark. Claire Bloom is lovely and her talent comes shining through, particularly in the last half of the film as she and Mason begin to heat up together. The music and the cinematography add immeasurably to creating an 'other worldliness' to this movie. If you find the plot drags a little at the beginning, stick with it because the intensity picks up as the plot unfolds. The suspenseful ending feels like a knife in the heart. Definitely a precursor to the The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.