Movie #19: Released in 1949, directed by Carol Reed, 104 minutes. New to me!

LetterBoxd Score: 4.5 (but I feel grouchy about it; see below)

Tough to write, because it’s beloved by some friends and I want to like impish Orson Welles, but this movie feels overrated to me.

After talking it over with GPT-4, I can see why it’s so highly regarded.

• The postwar Vienna set really is very good
• The zither music really is very distinctive; it adds a jauntiness to something that could otherwise feel kind of dour
• All those dutch angles
• The chase through the sewers is so tense and disorienting that it feels like a different movie
• Orson Welles speech steals the show

But I’m not sure all this adds up to as much as people think; they’re not so additive. Maybe the zither just undercuts it all too much? The movie is lauded for it’s moral complexity, but it seems pretty straight-forward to me; the villain is bad, except he’s played with by Orson Welles at his most charming so people ignore it. The dutch angles and the black and white are good, but kind of feel like surface dressing. Basically, my take on this is that it’s a jaunty little caper, well executed and filmed in an interesting location, but nothing much more significant, until Orson Welles shows up. At that point, the movie makes an interesting pivot into darkness, but for me we don’t get quite enough of this.

Why would someone think it’s one of the ten greatest films ever made?

Tick your boxes and it seems like a masterpiece? But I didn’t feel much except for during the Ferris wheel scene.

Next Week: Late Spring