The Button Down Blog

I hadn’t even heard of The Third Man until Netflix told me I’d like it. I decided to give it a shot. I mean, it’s got Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten from Citizen Kane, and the reviews are pretty darn positive, so there must be something to it.

Fortunately for Netflix (we’re still on the outs since The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), I liked The Third Man quite a lot. The zither music throughout the film set it apart as a film, and I was delighted at what I saw. (BTW, it’s rated A for Adults.)

Set during the post-World War II occupation of Vienna, the film follows American author Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotten, below) as he tries to figure out how his friend died. Before long, Holly is caught up in a web of lies so complex that even the audience isn’t sure if he’s right.

And that’s the film’s first success. Before I got the DVD I knew that the accident that killed Harry Lime, and even the fact that he died, was in question. I also knew that the part of Harry Lime (what a great name) was played by Orson Welles, so Harry would obviously be making an appearance. Still, I found myself questioning everything right along with Holly. Was Harry murdered? And by whom? For what reason?

Alida Valli, the actress who played Harry’s love interest Anna, has a haunting, troubled beauty. She knows things as they are, not as she wishes them to be. In occupied Vienna, she knows that things like the black market and forged papers are necessary. But with American ideals that see the city from across the ocean, Holly would claim that morality is binary; either a thing is right or it is wrong.

The occupying forces, of course, agree with Holly. They’re bringing Vienna back from the brink of barbarism, and their rules are there for a reason. What they cannot see, or at least cannot acknowledge, is that their laws may work when looking at the grand scheme, but also crush the people with their rigidity.

Major Calloway and Sergeant Paine (pictured above) are, then, in an impossible position. They’re the middlemen who see the hardship on the street while also seeing the ideal being propped up. They understand why people must circumvent legal means of trade, but see the importance of shutting down the black market.

And that’s where Harry Lime comes in. Harry is the underbelly of the black market personified. He’s in Vienna to make a buck, plain and simple. If someone gets hurt in the process, then that’s just the price we pay for society’s advancement.

This is what makes The Third Man successful. It’s a seemingly simple problem, but writer Graham Greene and director Carol Reed present it within a story of intrigue that both complicates and finally answers it with a breathtaking chase through the sewers of Vienna and a long walk after a funeral.

Dark and humorous, beautiful and cynical, this classic noir is a film of contradiction. Give it a look and see if you agree.

With apologies, this is easily the shortest review I’ve written. It’s just that I don’t have much to say about this one.

I saw The Treasure of the Sierra Madre last weekend. I was mostly unimpressed by the experience. I’m not sure if I was just in the wrong mood, but I felt like it was just standard 1940s movie fare. Pretty heavy handed on the moral lesson, a bit over-the-top on the performances, overbearing music, the whole nine.

It’s not that Humphrey Bogart or Tim Holt (above, for example) gave a bad performance, it’s just that it was so obvious how it was going to turn out. I guess there’s only so much you can do with “Hey, I’m a swell guy.” “Gold’ll change you!” “Hey, I’m a bad guy now because of gold.” “Told you.”

I never knew where the “stinking badges” line came from, so it was fun to have it sneak up on me. That was the best part of the film for me. Well, that and Walter Huston’s little jig.

His Oscar-winning little jig.

All in all, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre only ended up rating mediocre for me. Better luck next time, John Huston.

Warning: This review contains a major spoiler, so if you don’t want to know what happens in the last ten minutes turns out, turn back now.

I actually enjoyed The Heart is a Lonely Hunter for most of the movie. It had the right mix of quirky and earnest to suit my tastes. It’s the story of a deaf man (Alan Arkin, below) who is waiting to gain legal guardianship of another deaf man who is also mentally challenged and committed to a mental hospital.

While he waits for permission to remove his friend from the hospital, we follow him as he gets acquainted with the town he’s moved to. We meet a middle aged couple dealing with financial hardship, a teenage girl afraid to dream, a drunken drifter, a black doctor looking back on a lifetime of choices, and the doctor’s daughter, who has a tenuous relationship with her father.

The film has a great cast, including Cicily Tyson, Stacy Keach, and Sondra Locke. I even recognized the second deaf man as Tinker Jones from the first season of Little House on the Prairie ¹, so that was cool. Even with this cast, though, I don’t think The Heart is a Lonely Hunter lived up to its potential.

Maybe it was the change of era from the book’s 1930s to the late 1960s. The financial problems would have been a lot more potent set against the Great Depression. Other parts of the story would have made more sense in the original setting, too. The institutionalized racism shown in the doctor’s subplot were interesting and germane to the times, but I wonder if his story would have benefited from being set before the Civil Rights movement.

There were also problems with the direction. It had that late 1960s loosey-goosey ‘that’s good enough’ feel to it. It reminded me of the direction in Sybil, though in that case the failure wasn’t fatal. Here, I just kept wondering if they couldn’t have given each scene one more shot.

But the biggest problem I had with The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was in the last ten minutes. It’s going along, and going along, and a bunch of disconnected things are happening, and I’m waiting for all the storylines to join into one, and hey isn’t that drifter going to return soon, and then Alan Arkin kills himself and the end. Muh-wha? Excuse me?

I just about threw the remote at the TV.

If I were handing out opinions about what film you should see (which, come to think of it, I am!), I’d skip The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Maybe see it for Alan Arkin, because he’s truly wonderful in the role. And the doctor’s story is kind of poignant. Otherwise, it’s a pass.

 

 

¹ And yes, I remembered the character’s name without looking it up. Such is my love for the first season of Little House. ⇧

(Thanks to DVD Beaver for today’s screencap.)

I’ve wanted to see this film ever since I saw WALL•E in the theater. Several of the songs from Hello, Dolly! are used in that one, and I was curious to see the source material. I saw it as a stage production, but that was 20 years ago in high school¹, so it was fun to see it and almost remember some of the songs.

What a fun movie. From the opening sequence of people’s shoes walking in time to the music, it had me under its spell. Jerry Herman’s Oscar winning score is light and effortless in its expression of unadulterated joy. I’m not the biggest Barbra Streisand fan, but she is marvelous as Dolly. Her voice is impeccable, and she owns the music.

Of course, Barbra isn’t the only star. Michael Crawford (above) is convincing as Cornelius, a man-child who’s never left Yonkers to explore the big city. He has a Dick Van Dyke-ish quality in his performance. It grates after awhile, but he does it well. With totally-not-gay-life partner Barnaby, Cornelius makes his way to New York City to find a couple of fag hags women to kiss².

Walter Matthau serves as leading man, and honestly, his performance is the weakest link in Hello, Dolly! for me. Sourpuss was Matthau’s stock-and-trade, but here he is so sour that I couldn’t figure out why Dolly would be so enamored with him.

You can definitely see director Gene Kelly’s fingerprints all over it, and Michael Kidd’s choreography meshes wonderfully with the music. The whole production is just BIG, and not just in scenes like the big parade. Even the smaller sets have a bigness to them. When set against its time (1969, when Midnight Cowboy won best picture and anti-war protests were common), Hello, Dolly! stands out as a statement of defiant optimism.

And that’s an optimism that we need to see again. Take another look at Hello, Dolly! and remind yourself of the prosperity of spirit that should accompany our daily lives. Then watch it again so you don’t forget.

¹ Upon realization that it had been 20 years since I was a high school sophomore, I curled into a fetal position and slowly rocked back and forth for about an hour. ⇧
² Oh, come on. They spend the night in the cellar together. Cornelious is 28 years old and he’s never kissed a girl. They’re going to show the girls the town “from top to bottom” then take them to a ballroom dancing competition. They may as well as have had pitcher/catcher shirts on! ⇧

I was a bit skeptical last year when people started raving about Ben Affleck’s first directorial work. I’m not exactly in the “HE SUX!” camp, but he doesn’t exactly have the most distinguished record in front of the camera. But with Gone Baby Gone he more than got himself out of the doghouse.

Gone Baby Gone is the story of private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro (Casey Affleck and Michelle Monoghan, below) as they search for a missing four-year-old. Based on the novel from author Dennis Lehane (#4 in a series, from what I gather), the first half seems almost straightforward in execution, almost Law & Order–esque¹.

Then, somewhere in the middle, the emphasis went from the dramatic aspect to the thriller, with a pinch of character piece for good measure. It went from being about the missing little girl to a fascinating series of questions, each leading to the next, all of them exploring what happened around her abduction.

But the film succeeds on more than just plot. The performances are stellar.  Ed Harris has an intensity that one would expect from a Boston police investigator. I loved his scene alone with Casey Affleck. Very powerful stuff. And Morgan Freeman was used sparingly, but he owned every scene he was in.

Amy Ryan (above, with Harris) turned in a stunningly honest performance as Helene McCready, mother of the missing girl. Putting aside her perfect accent, she was completely believable in the role. From her early flippancy to later when Helene finally understands the gravity of the situation, she totally sold it. She is the coke ho, in a totally appropriate way. (And she doesn’t really look like that. She’s breathtaking in real life.)

But really, Gone Baby Gone belongs to the Affleck Brothers. Ben surprised just about everybody with his directorial vision. For starters, he had a difficult story on his hands, done in two acts rather than the standard three, which added some potential for failure. Also, I loved his use of local folks as extras in their native Boston (specifically, Dorchester), firmly rooting the film in reality.

By far my favorite scene was (how do I do this without giving something away?) the one in the bathroom. I didn’t see it coming², and the choice to shoot it as if it were a traumatic memory, with the slow drumbeat in the background slowly fading out as it passed, was insanely effective. Just wonderful.

Casey Affleck, who I loved in The Assassination of Jesse James, outdoes that performance with Gone Baby Gone‘s detective struggling with issues of morality and duty. I totally believed him as he worked his way through the complex web of deception, and his performance in the aforementioned bathroom scene was (I’m running out of adjectives) stunning. (I do wish he’d get the marbles out of his mouth, though.)

Of course, now we come to the question that everyone asks after they’ve seen this film: Do you think he was right? I’ve heard arguments from both sides, and I can say without reservation, he absolutely did the right thing.

Both times.

¹ Almost! I said almost! ⇧
² I literally gasped and held my hand in front of my mouth for a good five minutes. ⇧