Who is the Audience for This Movie?

Fans of film-noirs.

What I Liked About This Movie

Film-Noirs are often very formulatic affairs yet they somehow managed to be remade over and over with a varying levels of success. Why am I saying this? Because I find many older film noirs too slow and plotting to be truly entertaining. The Third Man employs the technique of fast editing which is seldom used in the genre. If the pace was slower The Third Man would not be nearly as effective. I feel it would have been commonly compared to the many generic film-noirs that have been created if the editing was not as tight as it is. Utilizing language barriers, many of the tertiary characters speak only German to create a puzzling atmosphere for the main character and the audience.

Orson Welles character is not very prominent until later on in the movie making his performance significantly more poignant because of the lessened screen time. Near the end a big twist is thrown into the mix that involves interesting moral issues that happen to be the best part of the entire movie. During this time their also happens to be some excellently dramatic cinematography to pad out what I consider to be the perfect example of how to end a movie. The last shot of the movie in particular is absolutely stunning.

What Didn’t Work For Me

Musical cues seemed way too happy considering the movies mysterious tone.

Should You Watch This Movie?

I highly suggest you give it a viewing.

My Rating (Out of 13)