Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Review: The Third Man

I saw an episode of Law and Order recently, a rerun, where ADA McCoy uses the film 'The Third Man', to make a point in a trial.
After hearing that, I decided to watch the movie for the first time. Luckily, or so I thought, Netflix has it available for instant viewing.
I'd heard generally good things about it, it had Orson Welles after all, So I was anticipating a good movie.
First, I want to make two things very clear: The story was good. I won't give up the plot, McCoy did a good job of that.
Second, no matter how good the story, I will hardly ever enjoy a Film Noir, as this was meant to be. For all I know it was one of the first of the genre. The one exception to that policy is 'The Maltese Falcon', and even that had such bad acting in it as to be close to not being enjoyable.
It seems to be a hallmark of Film Noir: Bad acting. The only decent performance given was by Orson Welles, and sadly, we only got to see him for the last third of the film, and even then, we didn't hear him much. But his performance wasn't enough to save this film in my opinion.
The awkward lighting and tilted camera angles aside, the music, if you must call it that, was truly the worst I've ever heard that was associated with a film.
The really sad part is: they turned a good story into a bad film. Had this been done straight as a mystery/thriller, it would have been far better that what I saw. I did see it until the end, though I must admit, I was playing games in the foreground, waiting for Orson to make his appearance.
So I don't know what the fuss was about. Maybe for its genre it wasn't bad, but compared to other movies made in the same era, it was really, really bad.
I try very hard not to be negative in life, and since subscribing to Netflix I've seen many a good film and Television. I may write a review later about an Episode of 'Doctor Who' that can truly be called epic.
I may watch it again to get the bad taste of 'The Third Man' out of my brain.
Have a wonderful day!

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