A general fan of noir films of all ages as well as a Welles fan, I got around to watching this one in the past week. While not as “fun” or as “enjoyable” as say Casablanca it is just as much a classic.
Start with the cast and production…you have the widely underrated Joseph Cotten in the lead as an American fiction writer traveling to post WWII Vienna in hopes of filling a job for a friend he hasn’t seen in a long time played by Orson Welles. A more perfect duo has likely not been seen on film between this and Citizen Kane and other Welles works, they work magic with one another. The film’s writer? Graham Greene, he of The Quiet American and other landmark novels. The producer? David O Selznick of Gone With the Wind, Rebecca, King Kong and numerous other famous films. That just scratches the surface of which I won’t dive here which includes director Carol Reed’s use of camera angles, deep focus on some truly lush sets, lighting design, and a deep examination of the concluding chase through the sewers of Vienna which is simply legendary.
The ruins of postwar Vienna are filmed extensively showing the destruction across large swaths of the city while it tries to get on with its life while being partitioned by various competing parties in the Americans, Brits, Russians, and French. This makes the film dark enough in its tone itself before we even get to the root issue which is the theft and reselling of diluted penicillin to the needy by the friend Cotten has come to see and who is now reportedly dead of a car accident. Hundreds of children and Austrians in general are dying or coming down with crippling diseases because of the actions of Cotten’s scamming friend. Further, a Czech actress posing as a local Austrian under false pretenses to escape the clutches of the Russians is in love with Welles character. All of which creates a doomed love triangle with no hope of redemption for anyone. Some of the darkest, nihilist dialogue created for a Hollywood film is found here: “You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?”
Just great stuff. You won’t come away with a smile but will come away with a knowledge you have just watched of the best films ever made.