MOVIECLUB #7 - Due Monday 6/22: The Third Man

The Third Man (1949)
Due Monday, June 22nd

Written and Directed by Carol Reed
Co-written by Graham Greene, Alexander Korda, and Orson Welles

Starring:
Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard and Orson Welles

Wiki-Trivia:
The Third Man won:
The 1949 Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival
The British Academy Award for Best Film
An Academy Award for Best Black and White Cinematography in 1950.

The British Film Institute selected The Third Man as the best British film of the 20th century.

The AFI awarded The Third Man as:
* 1998 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies #57
* 2001 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills #75
* 2003 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains:
o Harry Lime, villain #37
* 2008 AFI's 10 Top 10 #5 mystery film

(all this, despite it being a British movie)




Recommended Double-Feature: Touch of Evil (1958)

More Suggestions:
Mr. Arkadin (1955)
Oliver! (1968)
The Limey (1999)

Speaking of Touch of Evil, my Hitchcock teacher showed us footage of his interview he did with Janet Leigh tonight. Primarily the parts where he talked to her about Psycho, but she was comparing working with Wells and Hitchcock.

Touch of Evil was a great movie and a perfect companion to The Third Man, I recommend both to whoever watches one.

Additional Double Feature Suggestions:

The Trial
Home Alone (both feature villains named Harry Lime)
Citizen Kane (both feature Cotten, Howard and Welles)

I never tire of watching The Third Man. What I love about it is that it's not a classic in what many (insolent) people may define as arty, lofty, and slow. The Third Man is brimming with brilliant dialogue, real wit, real excitement, and Harry Lime is one of the best characters cinema will ever see.

I'd combine this with something like Miller's Crossing, which is very much influenced by The Third Man

numbersix_99 wrote:I'd combine this with something like Miller's Crossing, which is very much influenced by The Third Man

good call.. out of the countless modern references made to this classic film, the Coen Brothers were the most prominent..

i loved this movie--but my "love" got mitigated to, perhaps, "greatly enjoyed" at the conclusion... not to say that i had ANY problem with how the movie ended.. maybe i'm just spoiled by modern cinema where i expect yet-another twist to squeeze into the last 10 minutes of a movie.. in other words, at the time of viewing, i thought the ending was a bit lackluster.. i mean, the bad guy turns out to be (shocking!) the bad guy... granted, Harry Lyme has depth... and those Orson Welles' puppy-dog eyes.. but, beyond that, were we really supposed to provide sympathy for his character?? i kept hoping that Lime would be revealed to be a good man (not likely a great man), and the police would be revealed to have distorted the facts in order to make a case.. i got neither.. Lime IS a dick, and I couldn't feel bad for him in the end..


great score, btw


more to say soon

For the record I have previously watched The Third Man and Laurence Of Arabia and am hesitant to use up my precious viewing time to rewatch either, although I am tempted to with The Third Man. A movie which I thoroughly enjoyed watching, and deserves all it's accolades. I much prefer it to Citizen Kane. I find the comparison to Miller's Crossing interesting as I didn't really like it much yet I liked The Third Man a lot. I also liked Lawrence but not as much as The Third Man.

one thing that surprised me about this movie was how often it was funny.. i mean, for classic noir, i was expecting something much darker.. but scenes like the runaway taxi driver and the parrot incident were hilarious..

finally saw Touch of Evil.. loved it--Charlton Heston managed to pull-off "brown face" just fine.. Orson Welles was unrecognizable! sure, he was in heavy makeup (and some say prosthetics), but what the hell HAPPENED in the nine years since The Third Man?? all of the bit players were great--except for the Norman Bates-character.. what the hell was even doing in that movie? i found him more distracting than anything... oh, and I actually found Janet Leigh's performance somewhat irritating.. and what the hell is up with her choice of motels?? stay at the fuckin' Double Tree next time..

the film overall was far from perfect.. i couldn't help but constantly compare it to The Third Man (which was the point of making it part of a Movie Club Sandwich in the first place), and I couldn't help but think how much better The Third Man has dated.. Touch of Evil (1958) just feels so old-timey.. I didn't get that feeling watching The Third Man (1949!)

we watched the "restored" cut, where Welles' original vision of the film was (posthumously) cobbled together from the existing footage.. the dvd also includes Welles' 58 page "memo" which he wrote in response to first seeing the studio cut of the film (which was the official version until relatively recently).. a funny and enlightening read--if you're into that stuff