The Third Man (1949)

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104 min – view video trailer

Director: Carol Reed
Starring: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli

Genres: Film-Noir, Mystery, Thriller

IMDB 8.5 / Amazon 4.6 / MRQE 91% / ReelViews 4 stars

Oscars: nominated for 3, won 1 (Best Cinamatography)

Ranked #17 Greatest Movies Through 1960, a Zagat Top Movie, included in 19 of 37 lists of Greatest Movies

Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, black-market opportunist Harry Lime. IMDB rating 8.5 from over 66,630 users

Zagat summary snippet: Hailed as all around perfect with a memorable final fade, this masterful postwar noir simmers with shadowy intrigue as an alienated Cotten encounters romance and betrayal while searching bombed out Vienna for a mysterious black marketeer (Welles).

In this all-time classic thriller with stunning cinematography, twisting plot and unforgettable zither score, Martins searches for Lime through the seedy underworld of postwar Vienna and gets caught up in a web of love, deception, racketeering, and murder. Amazon 4.6 stars from over 338 users

From a visual standpoint, The Third Man consistently impresses. The black-and-white cinematography is crisp and clean. Orson Welles is credited as once saying that every performance is better in black-and-white, and, viewing something like The Third Man, it’s not hard to understand why. The atmosphere is deeper and the images are more striking. ReelViews highest 4 star rating

MRQE gave it 91% rating with links to more than 114 reviews

Madison Public Library

Citizen Kane (1941)

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119 Min – rated PG – view video trailer

Director: Orson Welles
Starring: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten

Genres: Drama, Mystery

IMDB 8.5 / Amazon 4.0 / MRQE 97% / Decent Films A+

Oscars won (1 of9): Best Writing/Screenplay (Orson Welles, Herman Mankiewicz) / nominated: Best Picture, Best Actor (Orson Welles), Best Director (Orson Welles), Art/Interior (Perry Ferguson, Van Nest Polglase, A Roland fields, Darrell Silvera), Cinematography (Gregg Toland), Film Editing (Robert Wise), Music (Bernard Herrmann), Sound (John Aalberg)

Ranked #1 Greatest Movies Through 1960, in 37 of 41 best movies lists, a Zagat Top Movie

Following the death of a publishing tycoon, news reporters scramble to discover the meaning of his final utterance. IMDB rating: 8.5 from over 177,676 users

Arguably the greatest of American films, Orson Welles’s 1941 masterpiece, made when he was only 26, still unfurls like a dream and carries the viewer along the mysterious currents of time and memory to reach a mature (if ambiguous) conclusion: people are the sum of their contradictions, and can’t be known easily.  Amazon 4.0 stars from over 806 users

At the height of the Hollywood studio system, when studio bosses controlled every aspect of filmmaking from production to exhibition, this film was made by a handful of brilliant artists who were given virtually the unprecedented creative freedom to do whatever they wanted. Incredibly, the film was spearheaded by an extraordinary triple-threat talent (Welles, who co-wrote, directed, and starred in addition to producing) who, at only 25 years old, had cut his teeth on radio and stage, but had never before made a film… Controversy surrounding the release of the film has become an enduring part of its legend. The character of Charles Foster Kane was widely recognized at least in part as a fictionalized version of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, and Hearst furiously did his best to suppress the picture and have it destroyed. Read full Decent Films review (rated A+, Superior artistic-entertainment for Teens & Up)

MRQE 97% rating with over 121 reviews linked

NOTE: this is arguably the greatest movie ever made and it shows up in more lists of great movies than any other movie – usually in the top ten and often in the top three!  What is interesting is that it was written and directed by Orson Welles who also starred in it!  But most interesting is that it was his first feature movie – all at the old age of 25!  It is said that this movie resembled a bit too much the life of William Randolph Hearst who tried to stop the film from being made and then from being shown in theaters.  Apparently the movie was actually booed at the Academy Awards ceremony and the only award it won was for best screenplay.

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