Programmer for a Day curated by Rod Newman
THE THIRD MAN
Monday, March 11 at 7:30pm
$16 Public | $10 Members
This special screening is presented by Cinema Arts Centre
member Rod Newman who won our ‘Programmer for a Day’ prize at a CAC fundraiser.
In rubble-strewn postwar Vienna, its occupation divided
among four powers, pulp Western writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten)
arrives to meet up with his old friend Harry Lime, only to find that he’s dead
— or is he? And as the supremely naïve Martins, a monoglot stranger in a
strange land, descends through the levels of deception, and as he discovers his
own friend’s corruption, the moral choices loom. A triumph of atmosphere — with
its Vienna locations (including the gigantic Riesenrad ferris wheel and the
dripping sewers), its tilted camera angels, its Robert Krasker-shot
shadows, and Anton Karas’ unforgettable zither theme — and with its
stars in perhaps their most iconic roles: bereted Trevor Howard at his
most Britishly military; Alida Valli, here truly enigmatic and
Garboesque; and Orson Welles’ Harry Lime, arriving in one of the
greatest star entrances ever, and adding the famous “cuckoo clock”
speech to Graham Greene’s original script, with the whole topped by its
legendary final shot. Three Oscar nominations: for director Carol Reed,
editor Oswald Hafenrichter, and cinematographer Krasker, with a win for
the latter; the Grand Prize at Cannes; and the only film on both the AFI and
BFI Top 100 lists of, respectively, the greatest American and British films (#1
for the Brits), as well as being named The Greatest Foreign Film of All Time…
by the Japanese! (UK, 1949, 103 min., b/w, DCP)
