AFI Top 100: The Third Man

The Third Man - It's hard not to see how this is a classic. But then again, somehow it's slightly thin and shallow on repeated viewings. I remember originally seeing this and loving it. But this time around, it was slow, dull and kind of pointless. It's like a noir, but not all the way. It's shot like a noir, with plenty of shadow and a deep, twisting plot where the lead is played for a chump. But then there's the odd ukelele sounding music (actually I learned from Wikipedia the instrument is actually Austrian.), which just either brings you into the odd little story or throws you for a loop as if this whole thing is supposed to be a comedy. I think there may have been a failed attempt to make this a black comedy. But since it wasn't funny, people thought it was a straight up mystery.

Anyway, the story follows a hack writer who goes to Austria to see an old friend, who apparently has died, after being an underground black market trader accused of selling bad medicine that killed some people. So the guy goes on a hunt to find the third witness to the death of his friend. I won't spoil the film and tell you who the third man is, but since it's a twisty noir-ish film you can probably figure it out. (Especially since Orson Welles plays the dead friend, and if you're going to have Orson Welles in a movie you can't just talk about him the whole film.) It has the trappings of a noir, the femme fatale, the dark shadowy setting, murder, yadda yadda. But in reality, it's just too simple of a story and movie to have any deep meaning. Most noirs show us the dark underworld of men's souls, represented in our dark worlds, all metaphorical of who we are on the inside, but just like Joseph Cotton (who I think isn't a real actor, he seems to have sort of accidentally got lost onto a movie set or been friends with Welles, and never intended to be a true thespian) anyway...just like Cotton is played for the chump in the film, the audience is played for the chump in thinking this is better than any other old film that's more deserving.

P.S. - This film is British and shouldn't even be on the list of America's best films.