I watched Carol Reed's classic movie The Third Man on the TeeVee last night for the first time in a long time. I really like it, though I don't think it's the greatest movie in the world. That could be because I'm just not a big Graham Greene fan. Jospeh Cotten does a great job with the Graham Greene bumbling dimwit American role. Orson Welles is great as the charming, and menacing villain. I like it because the cinematography is spectacular.
Some people (like me) love the Anton Karas film score. Other people can't stand it.
Here is the spectacular chase scene through the sewers of Vienna. A surprisingly athletic Orson Welles runs like frightened rat.
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When I visited Vienna for the first time, I had visions of this film. In the summer, as you walk through the squares, you can get a whiff of the sewer from those funny old wooden display hoardings, or from old grates etc. And the ferris wheel totally did it. Although modern Vienna is much more colorful than after the war, it's surprising how often you get feelings of the dark, brooding city of the film.
When I visited Vienna for the first time, I had visions of this film. In the summer, as you walk through the squares, you can get a whiff of the sewer from those funny old wooden display hoardings, or from old grates etc. And the ferris wheel totally did it. Although modern Vienna is much more colorful than after the war, it's surprising how often you get feelings of the dark, brooding city of the film.
When I visited Vienna for the first time, I had visions of this film. In the summer, as you walk through the squares, you can get a whiff of the sewer from those funny old wooden display hoardings, or from old grates etc. And the ferris wheel totally did it. Although modern Vienna is much more colorful than after the war, it's surprising how often you get feelings of the dark, brooding city of the film.
I've never been to Vienna, but I doubt it ever looked so glamorously decayed as it does in this movie.
I'd love to go to Vienna. I spent a lot of time on the city itself, a pioneering modern city, when I taught German modernism.
I highly recommend it. You'll hear that soundtrack plucking through your head.
One of my great favorites of all time.
I first saw The Third Man in Cambridge's Brattle Theater, the night before a Federal Courts exam, all during which, the next day, I remember the continuous playing of the zither in my head:
Deedle deedle dee, duh dee--BLING!
Deedle deedle dee, duh dee--BLING!
It was the only law school final I ever made a "C" on. I blame Carol Reed.
On a darker note, two years ago my daughter, after some difficult medical problems, had to have a 24-hour "central line," a portable pump that put medication and nutrition directly into her heart (not the coolest thing for a middle school girl to have to haul around for three months). In the course of this treatment we came to learn that one of the medications had been improperly "cut" and "stretched" as Harry Lime had done, to make a little more money, and apparently there were about twenty deaths from it.
Happily we only suffered from the fear and anxiety produced by the incident. But I remember at the time that it was as if my little girl were one of those about whom Lime asked Martins on the ferris wheel, How much would you care if one of those dots stopped moving?
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