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Some in Switzerland have never forgiven Orson Welles for unceremoniously inserting the following lines into Carol Reed's iconic film noir, The Third Man:

In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Sure, Switzerland also noticeably makes nice designer watches, but by philosophizing on the dichotomy and relationships between democracy, violence and creativity, Orson Welles added a layer of complexity and moral ambiguity to an otherwise straight villain that he so famously portrayed in the movie.

A hackneyed American writer, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton), arrives in post-WWII Vienna at the invitation of his college chum Harry (Orson Welles), only to find Harry has just died, leaving behind a grieving girlfriend (Alida Valli), the requisite film noir femme fatale. But nothing is what it seems after Martins starts to poke around, and Harry may not be so dead after all.

• With a screenplay written by Graham Greene
• Its famous black and white expressionist camerawork that won the film a cinematography Oscar
• The beautiful and melancholy zither music by Anton Karas that charmed Princess Margaret and later topped international music charts
• Welles' brilliant performance and his even more brilliant cuckoo clock speech written by Welles himself

... The Third Man has consistently been rated as perhaps the best British film noir ever made.

$8 HCSF members (includes one drink)

$12 non-members (includes one drink)

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