October 20, 2020

Sublime!

I am not a film critic by any stretch of the imagination, but today, feeling a bit distracted, I watched a film that always entertains no matter how many times I watch it.

Sublime!

I am not a film critic by any stretch of the imagination, but today, feeling a bit distracted, I watched a film that always entertains no matter how many times I watch it. The film is The Third Man, a film that I wrote about in my post Melancholy. See link at end of post.

The film was voted by the esteemed British Film Institute as the greatest British film of all time, and rightly so. I love the novella too. It works on so many levels.

I won’t go much on the plot, watch it, and if you know me I will loan you my copy, or just rent it from your favourite download site (hopefully legally please), be prepared for an explosion of every cinematic and acting technique known to the art form used absolutely brilliantly.

The cinematography by Robert Krasker uses a form of expressionist cinematography with the use of dutch angles and incredible contrast in the scenes, using shadow to convey suspense and intrigue. Exquisite.

The screenplay by Graham Greene is almost melodic it is beautiful. There were differences between the Director Carol Reed and Greene during the filming they had a big falling out as Greene wanted a happy ending and Reed did not. Reed was right the film needed an unhappy ending. The scene of Harry Lime’s fingers grasping the sewer grille, trying to cling on to life, and getting shot by his friend Holly Martins, is moving. Welles's 'visual plea' to Holly to end his life is indeed a ’sublime' moment. It is an incredibly poignant scene and Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten play the scene magnificently. Not one artiste in the film plays a sub-par role, it is a film the like of which will never be created again. It is wonderful.

Let us also not forget one of the best pieces of dialogue in the film Orson Welles, playing Harry Lime says:

In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

The line was added to the script by Welles himself.

It is a film that works so well. As I always say watch the film. Its a cinematic tour de force!