The Third Man
Warning: If you haven't seen this movie, stop reading right now, turn on your netflix, and watch this without reading anything about it. Just trust me on this one.
I recently participated in the movie character draft. I picked Hannibal Lecter early on as the best villain of all time. A bit later, someone picked Harry Lime. I had never heard of him, but I made a mental note to watch this movie, just so I could still feel justified in picking Lecter. I was wrong. This Hitchcockian thriller was beautifully filmed in a postwar Vienna, used unusual camera angles, had an incredibly haunting score, and had one of the finest performances by any actor ever in Orson Welles to tell this twisty tale of murder and corruption.
Holly Martin is an American writer who comes to Vienna at the request of his friend Harry Lime, who has a job for him. When he arrives, he is informed that Lime is dead. He goes to the funeral, and meets the usual suspects. We see from the start that not everything is as it seems. He starts investigating, and in the process falls in love with Lime's girlfriend.
When Harr Lime is finally revealed, it is the best reveal of any character ever. The lighting, the music, the buildup, and then the face
I don't know what's the best part of this movie. That introduction to Lime, the scene on the ferris wheel (the cuckoo clock line floored me), the third act chase in the sewers, or that final shot.
Let's talk about that final shot for a second. Throughout the movie, Reed (the director) used long shots of characters off in the distance, and held onto those shots longer than we normally expect. Lawrence of Arabia did a similar thing with the introduction of one of it's most iconic characters. But this final shot did something to me that not many movies can do. Not only was it shot absolutely perfectly, but the payoff was something that will likely stay with me for quite some time. What an absolutely brilliant way to end a film. I don't know if I can think of too many movies that had an ending as fitting.
This movie must've been the inspiration for pretty much every film noir that followed. The use of shadow and lighting is so suspensful and intense. Even something as benign as a balloon man gets the treatment to seeing him three stories tall from the shadows.
When I romanticize about cinema and the potential that it has, I think I had this movie in mind, even though I hadn't seen it yet. This is about as close to perfection a movie can be.