Well, then you must be burned at the stake.
Lime just seems like a caricature of himslef, a cardboard man.
What other films do you like?
My top 10 at the moment: Third Man, Princess Mononoke, Gosford Park, Brazil, Annie Hall, A Man for All Seasons, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Seven Samurai, Grave of the Fireflies, His Girl Friday.
What about you?
About Lime you have to remember that it is quite a small role ; he only has that one major speaking scene on the ferris-wheel. The role seems bigger because the whole film revolves around Lime and because his entrance and exit are so dramatic.
The film is really about the Cotten and Valli characters . Both of them are sad and rather desperate and Lime represents, in different ways, hope. Both of them find out what Lime does and have to make a decision about what comes first: personal loyalty or public duty. The greatness of the film lies in the richness of the historical context: their story is part of the larger desperation of post-WW2 Europe which is so dramatically shown in the Vienna locations.
Valli is really weak, though.
I haven’t seen monoke, but I love all the films you listed. I can’t believe you don’t like Hitchcock. Hitchcock is the greatest filmmaker that ever lived. Welles is a close second.
I thought Valli’s perfomance was pretty decent ,actually, though not as good as Cotten’s. As for Hitchcock I like him well enough and enjoy most of his films. It’s just that I don’t consider him a truly great filmmaker. His best films are very good rather than masterpieces IMO. What is your top ten list btw?
It was nothing some other actress couldn’t have done better. Bergman, Bacall, Hayworth, Crawford.
I couldn’t pick ten. Vertigo, Notorious, Rebecca, Chinatown, The Lady From Shanghai, Nosferatu, The Phantom of The Opera, Amelie, American Beauty, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Sunset Boulevard, City Lights, 2001, The 39 Steps, The Seventh Seal. you get the idea.
The point was that Harry was dealing in diluted or adulterated penicillin, which caused far more harm than it did good.
Witness the scene in the ward at the hospital.
Like all black marketeers, he wanted more for his buck.
Super-Evil Villain! Corruptor of Worlds! Biggest Bastard Since Hitler!
He doles out:
DILUTED PENICILLIN!
I think you’re hitting on the penicilin thing a bit too hard, after all, you’re a fan of the guy that made a whole movie out of the concept that lovebirds and seagulls are the enemy.
The crows ripped a guys eyes out. Lime’s penicillin made an apparently empty ward. It just wasn’t in keeping with the script.
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That’s me showing my tongue to you.
Honestly now, I simply can’t see what’s the problem with the penicilin. Think of it as a McGuffin (did I spell this right?).
The diluted penicillin kills people or makes them insane. What more do you need to show that it’s a terrible trade? It’s not even a McGuffin. It’s an accurate historical detail and part of the historical authenticity that makes the film so special.
http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/voiceweb/v_brunt.htm
“The penicillin rackets in Vienna were real. There are accounts of British soldiers who sold diluted penicillin to the Viennese, pocketed the money, and went home to their wives and normal lives. When these soldiers saw The Third Man a few years later they began weeping in the movie theater, horrified at the consequences of their actions.”
Ok, Ok.
Ya, the movie was first-rate, but I REALLY loved the zither music and managed to get a couple of Anton Karas cd’s. Researching the song showed that the movie version was #1 on the charts for something like 24 straight weeks in 1950 to be replaced by…a Guy Lombardo (?) version of the SAME song for…another 26 weeks! Us Americans just loves us some zither, but I don’t think even I could love it THAT much…although when I got the first cd, I did replay it 10 times in a row. Tickles my ears in just the right way.
zorch—
At the risk of sounding like a snot, I think “Brazil” is to cinema what fruitcake is to food: whatever the point is, consuming it to find out is more effort than it’s ultimately worth.
Another theme of “The Third Man” is Holly Martins’ naivete, which is an analogy for how the United States never really understood the nature of WWII and it’s effect on Europe for a long, long time after the event happened. Martens shows up in Vienna, having spent the horrific war years elsewhere, and tries to apply his morality to Lime, the man who, whatever his flaws, saved Schmidt’s life. Martens doesn’t really “get” why Schmidt is unimpressed with him, why she mourns for Lime; in his world, right and wrong are untroubled by nuance.
“Martens shows up in Vienna, having spent the horrific war years elsewhere, and tries to apply his morality to Lime, the man who, whatever his flaws, saved Schmidt’s life.”
But doesn’t Lime also betray Schmidt to the Soviets to save his own skin? I agree that Martens is naive but when all is said and done I think he makes the right choice.
As for Brazil I didn’t find it an effort at all though it is ultimately a dark film. Like most of the films on my top 10 I enjoyed it a lot scene by scene.