Three Steps North

Produced and directed by W. Lee Wilder, this Italian production stars Lloyd Bridges as a GI who returns to Italy after the war to find some money he stashed a few years earlier (I don't want to give away too much of the plot, so I'll be intentionally vague)--needless to say, he has a number of problems in getting to it and a number of other people manage to get in the way of his getting it. Lea Padovani is the lovely but fiery lady he knew during the war who he tries to find to assist him, and the colorful Aldo Fabrizi is a man who lives right next to where the money was stashed and who befriends Bridges, but who Bridges must keep in the dark about his REAL reasons for being in the area. As always, Lloyd Bridges manages to make the character richly detailed and full, giving him some unpleasant qualities even though he is the "hero" of the piece, and making us feel for him as he faces danger and encounters one problem after another. The ending is nicely ironic while being positive and bringing the character to a new level of self-awareness. Wilder uses a number of nice, unexpected touches throughout and the location filming and mostly-Italian cast (except for two small supporting characters who play Americans)give the film a unique flavor. This originally received a US release through United Artists and was taped off TV during the early days of cable, when stations had a lot of time to fill and still played off-the-wall black-and-white B movies that could be gotten cheaply. Those days are long gone, but you should still keep your eyes out for this distinctive mystery with a fine Lloyd Bridges performance.

During the 1950s-60s, many Italian films sought out American actors to star in their films. The idea was that an American star might increase the film's marketability abroad. Many of the stars were actually very minor stars...folks who would one day be bigger stars, such as Richard Basehart in Fellini's "Il Badone" as well as this film, " "Three Steps North" with Lloyd Bridges.

When the story begins, you learn that during WWII, Frank (Bridges) was a very bad boy. He was a soldier who would steal from the military and sell these stolen goods on the black market. But, he got caught and was sentenced to four years in prison...and the film begins after he's released. His plan is to return to Italy because he left a small fortune buried there....and he wants to retrieve it. But, not surprisingly all sorts of problems occur...the first of which is that there is a military cemetery very close to where he buried the money...and it won't be easy to retrieve. But, before he can try, folks start dying and the local police take an interest in Frank.

This is a decent film. While it lags a bit in the middle, the story is entertaining and Bridges is excellent as a glib jerk! No, this man is no hero...and this makes the film quite unusual...but well worth seeing.

Where the movie really succeeds is as a character study. Bridges' ex-army man Frank Keeler comes across as unusually unsympathetic. We see him first as a penny-ante black- marketeer. Then, after serving a term in the brig, he cadges money from his buddies, but runs out on the debt. And if that's not bad enough, we discover he ran out on his Italian girlfriend and now, back in Italy, wants to use her again. Yeah, he's something of a rat, and only returns to Italy to dig up his buried army loot. Bridges is excellent, with an appropriate swagger and cocky self-assurance. And we don't so much root for him as wait to see what happens next.

Filmed on location in Italy, the authentic background helps overcome a rather muddled plot, especially the murky intrigue with American gangster Conway. What's really apparent, however, is the influence of Orson Welles' The Third Man (1950) from the previous year. Here, director-producer Wilder emulates much of Welles' complex visual style in a story that also resembles Welles' tale of post-war European intrigue, even down to the guitar accompaniment in place of the highly popular zither of The Third Man. Nothing necessarily wrong with this, except Welles is a really tough act to follow.

Anyway, It's an appropriate ending that achieves some poignancy without betraying Frank's selfish character; thanks also to Aldo Fabrizi's sly performance as the wily caretaker. All in all, it's an obscure movie, likely because of the absence of big name stars. Nonetheless, Bridges shows here how much talent there is outside those big name stars.

Lloyd Bridges returns to Amalfi. He was stationed there during the war in the Quartermaster Corps; then he was in prison for stealing. Now he's out with a dishonorable discharge, and looking for the loot he buried. Things get in his way: not only his old girlfriend, Lea Padovani, but the money is missing, and the fellow who has been spending freely is dead, and Bridges is a suspect.

The two leads keep up the pace of dialogue and performance, and there are some lovely shots of Amalfi, but there's a leaden pace to the rest of it, raising my hackles in a get-on-with-it way as the police get involved, and apparently random strangers. Clearly this is an attempt to tangle the mystery, to offer more suspects, but director W. Lee Wilder and editor Ruth Totz seem content to let scenes ramble on without much happening.

Director Lee Wilder - a complete unknown to me - had a potentially very gripping plot to work with, but failed on various fronts: cinematography, albeit keeping to the film noir tenets of darkness, is unremittingly dark throughout, consistently filmed at night or in the darkest parts of Amalfi, Italy.

Ex-GI Frank Keeler (Bridges) returns to Italy after doing 4 years in the clinker in Detroit, USA, to pay for his involvement in black market activity. Sensing that he was about to get caught, he had the good sense to bury the proceeds in a box by a cemetery.

However, all types of complications happen from that point on, and Lee Wilder simply cannot get believable performances from his cast, including noted Italian actors like Aldo Fabrizi, Lea Padovani (she sounds completely unnatural in English, but quite convincing in Italian) and Gianni Rizzo, among others.

Lloyd Bridges emerges as the least bad of the lot but still not good enough to convince me ever to rewatch THREE STEPS NORTH. 6/10.