I just watched _The Third Man_ in full for the first time

actually one of my favorite welles movies, lots of fun stuff. the goya party, the curiosity shop.

anna is kind of a hard part because the entire movie takes place within her ~72hour grieving period

(holly's grieving period is easier to watch since it takes the form of one of his books and it is vonderful the way he keeps the tension, but really it is only delusion that keeps him multi-note)

the scene in her apartment where she's wearing the HL bathrobe and holly is drunk and going on and on about trying to make her laugh is the most excruciating part of the movie, which they must have known because they put the perk-you-up welles reveal immediately after

btw eternal mysteries: does she say "sometimes he said i laughed too much" or "sometimes he said i loved too much"

this film is incredible.

random q: why do the Russians care so much about repatriating some random Czech woman?

I never knew there were snake charmers in Texas.

Some minor niggling points:
There seems to be an awful lot of time between the porter's death and then Holly and Anna arriving to find the accusatory crowd outside. Surely the body would have been discovered sooner. Also, why is the child unattended? And why, if the porter tells Holly to come back later when his wife is gone for the evening, is she not there to see the killers?

Anna shows up at the Cafe where Holly is waiting to meet Harry because "Kurtz told here" and "they were just arrested." Even so, how would he know, and if arrested how would he be able to tell her?

Manny Farber didn't like it as much as most of us

"I never knew the old Vienna before the war, with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm."

Anyway just noticed a few new things:
Anna refuses to throw dirt on Harry's purported grave during the first, fake burial, or burial of Harbin in Harry's place. Why? Because she is too upset? Because she knows Harry is alive? No to this latter, those who are in the know are eager to keep up the charade.

First spotting of live Harry is echoed/foreshadowed in other scenes of looking at window onto street, some from Anna's apartment, but also when porter looks out window into street with Holly to describe how the third man was ordinary looking - and at same time phone rings and there is no one there but heavy breathing when Anna picks up - is it Harry?

Also when Calloway looks out of window in his office and quips to Anna about Holly tailing her.

wait, holly walking down the sewer pipe out of the fog mirrors anna walking down the cemetery road between the trees

Connection that exists only in the cinematic unconscious: Harry getting ready to throw Holly out of the big wheel car in the Prater and Uncle Charlie Joseph Cotten trying to throw Young Charlie Teresa Wright from the train in Shadow of a Doubt.

Shot of porter calling from window to Holly in street inviting him to come by in the evening and then later shot of Kurtz and Winkel talking to Holly from window across the street from Prater. Holly knows better than to go inside since he knows what happened in the previous situation.

how does it look in digital?

Pretty sweet. First thing that stood out for me was Trevor Howard's black leather coat at the funeral.

Thought about changing horses and going to see the Les Blank Leon Russell instead but I stayed the course.

What kind of a spy do you think you are, satchel foot?

he moved his head, but the rest is good, isn't it?

what can i do, old man? i'm dead, aren't i?

First spotting of live Harry is echoed/foreshadowed in other scenes of looking at window onto street, some from Anna's apartment, but also when porter looks out window into street with Holly to describe how the third man was ordinary looking

forget how many times in these shots a passing streetcar softly sparks, possibly only once, but it is one of my fave small images

porter's speech there btw is as central as welles' later "dots that stopped": i didn't see his face. he didn't look up. he was quite... gewöhnlich. ordinary. he might have been just anybody.

oh the streetcar is on a shot from calloway's office window actually. "your american friend is still waiting for you."

my girl still hasn't seen this; would like to lure her to film forum for the remaster screening before it's gone.

You know what novel uses The Third Man to good effect? Memories of My Father Watching TV, by Curtis White.

@NextOnTCM
A mad zither player follows an American throughout Vienna as he searches for a missing friend. #TCM

wtf

lol feel like i've read that one before but idk where.

almost revived this last night to post this diss from the OW/jaglom book:

He didn't take the movie seriously. It wasn't a "Graham Greene" work. He gave me a line that I was supposed to say from atop the Wiener Reisenrad, the Ferris wheel: "Look at those people down there--they look like ants."

How is that book, btw?

pretty irresistible, some repetitions, some interesting variations. jaglom doesn't harry welles on film-school details the way bogdanovich did, so welles pretty much just raconteurs on his own terms, which is both good and bad. terrific stories all over of course and plenty of the kind of dirt that was kept out of the earlier book (that letter bogdanovich prints as explanation for redacting some ill-spoken-of name -- "always remember that your heart is god's little garden, yours sincerely, louisa may alcott" -- is the kind of letter jaglom didn't get), with much less talk about welles' actual work (hilites like kane and t3m excepted). so you trade the sequences where bogdanovich forces welles to talk about the camerawork in the trial for sequences like welles cursing out richard burton or rolling eyes at "little dusty hoffman" and of course

HJ: Bogdanovich called. He talked about--

OW: Wait! I'll tell you what he talked about: he talked about Bogdanovich!

[...]

HJ: Mask is about a boy born with a deformed face. He apparently picked this subject because the first play he took Dorothy [Stratten] to see was The Elephant Man. She identified with it, beause her great beauty was similar to the grotesque ugliness of the Elephant Man. In that the extremeness of each of them--extreme beauty and extreme ugliness--separated them from the common folk of the world.

OW: Shit!

which have their own pleasures obv. most valuable stuff for people who've already seen a lot of talk shows and pored over the other book is prob the transcriptions of their business talk, as jaglom hustles for him. a closer window than i'd had before into his late career.

he claims cecil b demille invented the fascist salute; idk if that one was out there before. "he had to think of something for all those extras to do, you know ... i've had arguments with historians about this, in rome. i say, you come back when you can prove to me everybody saluted like that."

the stuff on Reagan and Ike made me chuckle -- Orson, always after the big brass ring

jaglom forgets a name at some point and orson pounces: "you need reagan cards!"

and of course:

Houseman has had twenty commercials on camera. I’ve had one. I’m in terrible financial trouble…. If Wesson Oil would let me say that Wesson Oil is good, instead of Houseman, I’d be delighted, but nobody will take me for a commercial…. A real mystery: why they prefer Houseman, with his petulant, arrogant, unpleasant manner…. It’s a very weird and terrible situation. I don’t know where to turn… If I got just one commercial, it would change my life!… There is no “meantime.” It’s the grocery bill. I haven’t got the money. It’s that urgent…. Get me on that fuckin’ screen and my life is changed.

yeah the houseman nemesis stuff is black-comedy-worthy

I'm reading the daunting McGilligan bio. Merv Griffin reunited Houseman and Welles in the late '70s. They hugged, reminisced on set, walked their separate ways, and never saw watch other again.

man I gotta read this

OW such a bullshitter, he seemed to believe most of it tho.

I mentioned in the Vincent Price thread what a dreary late career Joseph Cotten had... At least Petulia is a real movie, but most everything after that seems to be dismal one-dimensional variations on same (Dr Phibes, Soylent Green, you name it). Funny I don't remember him in the TV film of A Delicate Balance with Kate Hepburn, gotta rewatch that...

in the McGilligan book Welles, who loved to flirt with men, soothes Griffin's hurt feelings after Orson reminds him that Cotten won't go on the show because "he doesn't like homos, you know.

yeah Christopher Isherwood had an incident w/ Cotten

maybe he hated most of us thinking that Jed Leland was a homo

Welles, who loved to flirt with men

"when i'm with homosexuals, i become a little homosexual, to make them feel at home, you know"

I knew OW and Micheál MacLiammóir had a fraught relationship dating back to OW's apprenticeship in Irish theater but didn't know OW spent one entire production flirting and leading on MacLiammóir's partner, who, of course, was the director.

His theatre mentor MacLiammoir (? Iago in that film) was pretty flamin'. xp

Anyway, I'm DRUNK.

MUST everything have to be about ORSON? Carol Reed weeps at this revive.

No -- I mean his stay in Ireland in 1932. MacLiammoir's partner directed Welles' first big break on stage.

These are good stories

These are good stories

These are good stories

Edited by Peter Biskind, America's foremost film historian

Saw this again last night...Checked my Letterboxd page and I didn't list this--it must be my favourite film that's not in my Top 100. I think I know someone who models her whole being on the Alida Valli character.

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