Filmed while Germany was still under Allied occupation, Jacques Tourneur’s post-war Euro-noir – in which a group of train passengers join forces to find a peace campaigner kidnapped by a Nazi spy ring – is notable mainly for its striking location shots of Frankfurt’s lunar-esque ruins.
Robert Ryan turns in another craggy hero-with-a-heart, and there are flashes of B-movie surrealism and some old-school fisticuffs.
But the lumbering plot and laboured metaphor of post-war détente look hopelessly dated next to its obvious comparison, The Third Man.
