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Last night at the Detroit Flim Theater I saw for the first
time a movie that is one of the best I've ever seen--"The
Third Man." I don't know how I missed it all these years.
What a masterpiece! Joseph Cotton was great in the lead role and
of course Orson Welles was tremendous as Harry Lime. Anyone who
hasn't seen this movie is missing one of the truly great ones,
right up their with "Casablanca." The directing (Carol
Reed) photography (Robert Krasker) score(zither rendition of
"The Third Man Theme,") and screenplay (Graham Greene)combined
to produce a suspense film the equal of anything by Hitchcock.
From the playbill Harry Lime's famous ferris wheel speech
attempting to justify his slimy black market activities: "You
know what the fellow said: In Italy for 300 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 500 years of
democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock."
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