Wells surely knows well how to construct the milieus and journeys shuttling between countries (will be walled soon) through his brilliant understanding of camera movement, how to conduct the emotions wrapped within personal and justificative conflicts. It is also a peculiar sociopolitical setup contradicting to a certain American-central-ism.
Losey keeps everything to a disarming cool, downplaying psychological irregularities with elliptical cuts and treating exaggerated genre clichés with a straight face. The film crystallizes the contradictory tug between materialism and humility, anxiety and hope, and faith and distrust that defined the US consciousness in the early postwar years.