THE THIRD MAN (64)

It's almost a moot point to try and write something new or interesting about Carol Reed's bonafide classic The Third Man (64). It is a film that has been written about by every famed film critic ever. A film that features Orson Welles, and features some of the most well-remembered bits of camera work ever pressed to celluloid. I read an interesting review of the film that said something along the lines of, even if you haven't seen the film you remember the angles, the darkened corners, the silhouette of Orsen Welles Harry Lime emblazoned against the misty light of the sewer tunnels. This is a movie that has been shown hundreds of thousands of times on video, in festivals, in retrospectives of the great films of the last hundred years. It is truly a classic film.

And I absolutely love it.

Aside from High and Low (24) I can't imagine a film I've seen in the Collection so far that I enjoy more. That I want to watch compulsively. That I enjoy enough to recommend to those who aren't even the slightest bit interested in the beauties of classic film. This is a film that took the structures of film noir and turned them on their head. Carol Reed is an amazing director and his work with this twisting tale by the famed Graham Greene is reason enough for him to be lauded as such. There's a strange sense of lack of direction in this film highlighted by the post-war Vienna that is its setting. There's a twisting criss-cross of language and nationalities that highlights the confusion and directionless wanderings of penny-novel writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) as he searches for his dear friend and confidant Harry Lime. It's a story about the search for what we think we know, and what it means to find out that none of this is true.

Orson Welles (if you don't know who Orson Welles is, you and I, we need to have a talk) plays Harry Lime in the film and is really only on screen for a small bit, but the presence he brings to these small moments (the ferris wheel ride and the speech about "small black dots" some of my favorite on film) showcase why this troubled man is considered to be one of the greats of cinema. He literally stands out against the rest of this talented cast, almost seeming more real, more alive than those who surround him. It's impressive and almost breath-taking to watch a true master work.

Let us not forget the works of genial drunk Joseph Cotton, as his sort of bumbling every man gives the audience foothold in this constantly shifting cast of international criminals. Holly Martins is a simple man, an almost stereotypical portrayal of the more negative aspects of the travelling American thrust in to a situation he has no clue, and no interest in. His interactions with the law, the common folk, well, pretty much everyone in the search for Harry Lime are as interesting as any part of this gripping thriller's plot. It's his off-the-cuff hard-boiled dialogue that draws me back every single time. His delivery so spot-on, you can almost feel the grit on his collar, smell the smoke lingering at the tip of his cigarette.

Toss in camera work you just don't see anymore, and a Spanish guitar score by Antan Koras and you have a film that deserves every accolade it's every received. And that's saying a ton.

If I could recommend one film that'll draw you in to classic film, I'd give you The Third Man (64) (possibly with a chaser of Charade (57) just for shits and giggles) and let you go. I can't imagine anyone wouldn't be excited to start scratching a few more layers off.

Don't put this recommendation on the shelf. Do yourself a favor.

Tomorrow: Rushmore (65)

Break time.

Sorry suckers.

I'm taking a two day break.

I'll be back though on Monday, loaded to the gills with Criterion films to drop on your pretty heads.

I promise. Don't miss me too much.

81 posts and the very beginning moments of THE THIRD MAN (64)

Holy jesus people, I've written 82 posts for Criterion Quest. 82 posts. That's a ton. A real pile of filmic ramblings if you ask me. I'm only 18 posts away from hitting the big one-hundro and after that the skies the limit.

Here's what I'm hoping for the future of this blog:

1. That I'll hit two hundred posts long after I finish my 100th Criterion. Sometimes I just stare at the list of amazing movies I have in store for me, and want to just skip ahead. But that's not in the nature of the quest. I don't want to take anything away from you beautiful beautiful readers or my pure enjoyment of seeing each and every one of these films in order. Nonetheless, if I'm still in the 70s when post 200 drops, there's going to be a lot of consideration of how to up my movie digestion rate.

2. I want to make this more of an interactive thing. I want you good people, how ever many there are lurking about the shadows these days, to, if you're interested, to be a part of this blog. I want you guys to write reviews of upcoming movies, give me your opinions on the films, give suggestions for other movies I, or the other readers might be interested in. So, seriously, if you're interested at all in guest reviewing a Criterion film, get in touch with me and we'll set you up with something I think you'll like. It's fun, I promise.

3. Hopefully, when I have a bit more time, I can spend two or three minutes making this site not look like the droppings from blogger.com's rear end. As much as I enjoy "Template 3" from the fine blogger.com catalog, I'd like this to be a blog that is actually enjoyable to look at. I just have no idea how to do that, because I'm slow.

4. In the far future, I'd like to make this a place where new material is posted. I'd like to try and interview and talk to people as interested in these old films as myself and let them write pieces for the site. This is what you might call, "a lot of work" and I can't promise this anytime in the near future. But make a mental note: one day this blog is going to be bigger, better and even more exciting to come visit every day.

I hope.

In the last two attempts at watching The Third Man (64) (one of my favorite movies) I've managed to catch brief glimpses of it while trying to wipe snotty crust from a two-year olds eyeball and seen only the vibrating strings of the guitar that the opening credits are placed upon. What can I tell you? I'm tuckered these days. Absolutely spent, and I'm barely eeking out the work I get paid for.

But look above at that beautiful poster for the film and just imagine what I might say about Orson Welles, Carol Reed and the always impressive Joseph Cotten.

But for now, wallow in my inability to say anything even slightly related to movies. I certainly am.

Thursday: Lets try for The Third Man (64) but I'm not promising much

The "smart" side of horror and CARNIVAL OF SOULS (63)

I studied abroad in New Zealand many, many years ago. It was a slow, sometimes sad time that I'll always equate with Indian food and cheap, dark beer. During this time I fancied myself a film academic in training and signed up for a handful of film-related classes I was sure would fascinate me. Russian film (truly boring), New Zealand film (one of the worst taught classes I've ever been a part of) and Horror Film filled out my schedule and I was willing and ready to indulge in the glut of cinema coming down the pipe. Mostly, I was just excited for Horror Film. I've been a fan of horror in all its bizarre forms for years and the thought of someone actually teaching me about the genre's sordid history fascinated me, especially when our screening schedule featured some of the greats: The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Brood, and on and on and on.

Turns out the academic take on horror is fairly boring, fairly infuriating and exactly not what I wanted to learn about as a 20 year old in New Zealand. Instead of dissecting the director's motives behind a puking Linda Blair in The Exorcist we talked about periods and the "toothed vagina"; aliens in The Brood became symbols of mommy issues; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was removed from its context as seedy exploitation film and instead gained academic assumptions of family problems writ large. It was as boring and disappointing a class I've ever been a part of.

With that said, I was watching Carnival of Souls (63) last night and multitude of sort of academic minded thoughts (the kind that are based on a viewer's deas and not actually the thoughts of director, cast, writer, or cinematographer) came to mind. I'm not usually one who indulges in this sort of shit, but I thought it might be sort of interesting to pick apart a very basic, though beautiful and enjoyable b-movie and see if I could find deeper meaning in its subtext.

Layman's terms: I like wanking off intellectually.

Carnival of Souls (63) is, I think, a film about a modern woman in a tightly restricted society and the pressures it presents and how they eventually drive her to insanity. Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) after surviving an automobile's plunge in to an icy river, emerges as a new type of woman. Instead of the simpering, pure, motherly, almost subservient female audiences had become used to in the 1960s, Mary is much more a modern portrayal. She rebukes the advances of a skeezy boarder. She takes a job far away from family and friends, bucking the trends of the established housewife to pursue a career based on her academic history. In a scene with a stodgy preacher she attempts to force him in to breaking the law, and when he refuses, she comes back and does it again. Sure, she isn't reinventing Women's Liberation, but Mary is as modern a 1960s horror protagonist as you're going to get.

And she suffers greatly for it.

Mary has visions of ghosts that haunt her. Mary often times has these flashback like moments where she's actually drawn out of the real world and can only look on to the world passing her by. Mary slowly starts to lose her grip on the world she has known. Her bizarre flashbacks seem almost entirely based on her role as this modern woman, pushed so far outside of the prevailing views of the day that she actually unable to interact with those around her. She's pushed further and further away from reality, from the presence of real people and finds herself instead drawn to an architectural relic and the strange ghosts that float about there. She returns again and again to this decrepit resort (itself a symbol of a time gone by) and each time her loneliness seems more self-imposed in the context of this oppressive town she lives in.

As the film sort of plods to an end (it is not the most exciting of films), Mary is so disillusioned so terrified by her reception in this restrictive town, that she attempts to flee and is subjected to a series of horrifying visions in the process. As if the idea of breaking free from these ideals is so traumatizing that it actually draws these "terrifying" thoughts from her head. It ends tragically and I can't help but think that the final shots of Mary, dead in the front seat of the car, act as some sort of allusion to the cyclical world she may, or may not have felt trapped within.

Or Herk Harvey, director of Carnival of Souls (63) might've just been hungry to throw together a cheap-o horror film that starred a pretty girl and let him play with make-up. It's really just how you look at it.

Wednesday: The Third Man (64)

A few thoughts and CARNIVAL OF SOULS (63)

Here's a few thoughts:

1. Is there a shittier duo of holidays than Valentine's Day quickly followed by President's Day. Almost anyone who's been anywhere near me this week has probably heard my tirade about V-Day but here's a quick synopsis: Valentine's Day blows. Why? Because it's a no-win situation for anyone. If you're in a relationship you're automatically stressed because you're forced, for whatever reason, to create some sort of big event to show your loved one you care. Shouldn't you be showing said "loved one" you care every single day? On the other hand if you're not involved in a relationship, you're bludgeoned, repeatedly with the constant reminder that you my sad sack friend are without a special someone. Hope you aren't wallowing in depression and loneliness come February 14th, as it's pretty much sadness in a can, and lord knows what chemicals you'll be ingesting to, well "make yourself happy". I like the idea of having another reason to show the person you love how much you love, I don't like the fact that it's a plastic holiday created by a card company to make a bigger profit in the post-holiday season.

2. Oh, and even better, two days later it's fucking President's Day. Woooooooo! Go America lets celebrate a bunch of old dead white people who owned slaves and had rotten wooden teeth. Seriously, we have a holiday that celebrates politicians? What's next Lawyer Day? Thanks, but no thanks, celebrating corruption just isn't my bag.

3. I was at a concert on Friday night (a concert where I was so sick that I actually fell asleep standing up) and Henry Rollins was standing right next to me. Don't know who Henry Rollins is? Shame on you. One of the more influential musicians around. For those of you who do know the man, he's got to be 50 or so and he still looks like he could break the head off a lion. Sure, his fist pump seemed a little forced, and his man boobs poked out from his shirt a bit, but still, Henry fucking Rollins. Awesome!

And those are my thoughts.

B-movies can be described, in a more academic sense thusly:

(a) a genre film with minimal artistic ambitions or (b) a lively, energetic film uninhibited by the constraints imposed on more expensive projects and unburdened by the conventions of putatively "serious" independent film

In layman terms, b-movies are genre films (horror, sci-fi, westerns, etc.) shot on cheapskate budgets and usually unrestricted by the normal levels of quality you expect from your typical film. B-movies = shitty films that usually included monsters or cowboy hats. Yes, many of them are influential, but after you've waded through the river of academic shit, at the end of the day you're going to find low budget films that exist for well, fun.

So sure, the first half of Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls (63), the half I've watched, is good-natured cheesy fun. Sure, Harvey and his screenwriter John Clifford have put together a pretty stunning array of images, but in the end it's a high-end horror film. Girl survives terrible crash, girl drives to Utah to become organ player, girl starts seeing creepy maybe-dead people. That is honestly the entire plot. Yes, there's some side characters thrown in to round out the small town feel, but in general this is a movie about a woman who has visions after escaping a near-death experience. There's shoddy make-up, enjoyably bad dialogue, and a pervy male character that very well could be Christopher Walken's dirtier cousin - everything you want from your classic B-movie.

It's a fun film to watch, but in the long journey that will be the Criterion Quest I'm marking this one as a lesser oddity. A film I'm not unexcited to sit through, but not a masterpiece by any means.

Tuesday: Finishing off Carnival of Souls (63)

Waiting on the library, observations from the coffee shop, and my biggest addiction.

There isn't going to be any Criterion films on this blog for a few days. I ordered Carnival of Souls (63), the creepy cult film by Herk Harvey, from Netflix, and instead of the glorious beauty that is the Criterion double-disc affair, they sent me the altogether respectable Rhino reissue from a few years back. This isn't called Rhino Quest ladies and gentlemen so I'm putting the damn thing on hold for a few, while the plodding beast that is the Seattle Public Library gets me the good stuff. Until then I'm going to catch up on some of my TV "stories" and generally let my brain soften a bit in the sweet thrall of weekly storylines.

Shit, it was Crazy Person Breakfast at the old coffee shop this morning and I just wanted to drop a few observations of what I saw through the film of sleep wrapped about my eyes:

- The return of Dread Beard. As you might remember I talked briefly about old Dread Beard in a recent post. He is not a pirate, but at one point he did have two braids dangling from his dirty brown beard. When I last saw him he was being carted in to the back of an ambulance due to self-proclaimed "back pains". Before that he was telling me about cell phone lanyards, his plan to invest in a company loosely related to the sale of "Australian flags" and the search for a Kitchen-Aide for his, uh, "son". Everybody hates this guy, but not only do I find him harmless, but I think his sort of crazed rambling is damn entertaining. You don't have to listen in full, you can just sort of pick the bits and pieces you find interesting. Such as today, I have no idea what the connecting threads of these ideas were, but he spoke of these topics: the "3,000 year old argument of Communism" and it's role in a Yurt chat room he, yes, runs; the plague of efficiency engineers and their terror cell he refers to as "The Department of Vocation and Rehabilitation"; the invention of a structure he referred to as a "ply-room" and the equation for their construction that involved several hand signals and "the weight of a snow bank" (I stood slack jaw by the end of this conversation and he just said, "Simple math my friend"); and so much more that I missed as I near-slumbered behind the bar. This guy is gold and I pity those who can't revel in his absolutely lunacy.

- Hey guy wearing a flashlight clipped to your hat: you already look stupid enough wearing one of those goddamn Bluetooth headsets, the gold front tooth and ponytail aren't helping.

- Hey old guy in suit: yes, I've tasted the Ginger Ale, and the two minutes of rambling adjectives you used to describe it's flavor only confuse me. And yes, now we have your wallet, and Whiskey Pete has already spent your two dollars and thirty cents on malt liquor and 5-Hour Energy.

And that was my morning/afternoon at Fuel Coffee. I am a nexus of a oddness.

Lost is a big problem for me. Up until this season I've watched every single episode of this monstrous, fairly stupid weekly drama as they aired. For reasons I related to girl-related distraction, when the show fired up again five weeks ago I just wasn't in to following it on a live weekly basis. I had tired of the meandering plotlines, the reveals that meant nothing, the pure shittiness of some of the dialogue and acting. I was ready to give up.

But like the dirty yellow sheen of crystal to a meth-heads shiny eyes, I got a glimpse of the first episode on a website somewhere and was transfixed. There were flashing lights and time travel, John Locke and a big fat knife, and Hurleys man-boobs sheathed in the biggest shirt you've ever seen. And I was right back in to it. Over the last thre days I've been sacrificing even more sleep in my quest to catch back up to the misadventures of these island dwellers. I know, KNOW, that when the season crashes to a halt in eleven weeks, I'm going to be disappointed, I'm going to swear yet again to never go anywhere near this show again, I'm going to foreswear Damon Lindelof, J.J. Abrams and all their assorted ilk.

But it'll rear it's ugly head again, and I'll be honest, I'll be right back in the thick of it.

Monday: Again, I just don't know.

As lame an injury as could possibly be and THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (62)

I'm a huge wuss. Lets just put that out there. I never played any legitimate sports. Have rarely put myself in to any sort of danger that wasn't directly preceded by many many many many beers. And in all this eschewing of treacherous situations I've always believed that I'd be able to better avoid these things athletes and you know, tough people have to deal with because of their, er, athleticism and, uh, toughness.

So, I'm pretty pissed to realize that somewhere between typing on my computer and making fucking coffee I've somehow injured my left wrist/forearm. Yup, through the hardcore exercise regime of tamping coffee grounds and tip-tapping on this infernal machine, I've done something to these crucial muscles that has left my arm tingly and at times numb.

I am the weakest man alive. I am a limp-wristed tyrannosaurus rex. I am a ball of sucky goo broken by espresso and machinery.

It is one of my favorite experiences on the planet to come in to a film thinking I'm going to hate it, and coming out completely infatuated with almost every aspect. The Passion of Joan of Arc (62) was just that sort of film. There's something about the way Carl Th. Dreyer portrays his Joan of Arc (Renee Falconetti) that draws the viewer in. This simple close-up of Falconetti's face is a window in to the soul of this martyred saint. We lucky viewers are not viewing a woman acting a part, but in truth, we are looking at Joan of Arc, standing up to her oppressors, coming to grips with her relationship with God in the face of wilting adversity, facing down the doubts that creep in when death looks you in the eye. It is as moving a performance by a female actor as I've ever seen, and she doesn't say a single word in the film that you can hear.

This is a great, albeit fucked up movie about what we do to protect the things we believe in. The final moments of the movie (spoiler: Joan of Arc died) as Joan is strapped to the stake and fire is burning away at her, and the soldiers are macing her followers and all hell is breaking lose is almost torturous to watch. Each shot of the film, especially in the ending is absolutely perfect in its framing and its symbolism. This is a film that could be made today for a handful of change stolen from a bum, but the major studios, and the dumbasses we call a public film audience would shit all over it. They'd call it too experimental, too strange, too slow and that's the sad fact of our artistically barren Hollywood machine.

My favorite story, before I go, about Carl Th. Dreyer and this production: Dreyer spent a million or so dollars (a historic amount for 1927) building a perfect recreation of the what he imagined 11th century rural France would look like But when the producers saw the first cut of the film they quickly realized that Dreyer had shot almost entirely in close-ups, barely focusing on this brilliant set they'd spent this gratuitous amount of money on. And Dreyer just didn't give a damn, he wanted to create an environment in which his actors would feel as if they were actually existing in the time period, regardless of what shots he decided to use in the final piece. And from what I can tell, it one hundred percent worked.

I'm waiting on a film from the library right now, so for the next few days I'll be catching up on television shows via the internet and just generally dicking around in terms of movies and such on this here blog. But don't fret, the Criterion Quest will continue.

Friday: Lord knows.