THE THIRD MAN

Directed by Carol Reed
Starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles

(1949) In rubble-strewn postwar Vienna, its occupation divided among four powers, Joseph Cotten’s pulp Western writer Holly Martins arrives to meet up with his old friend Harry Lime, only to find that he’s dead — or is he? And as the supremely naïve Cotten, a monoglot stranger in a strange land, descends through the levels of deception, and as he discovers his own friend’s corruption, the moral choices loom. A triumph of atmosphere — with its Vienna locations (including the gigantic Riesenrad ferris wheel and the dripping sewers), its tilted camera angels, its Robert Krasker-shot shadows, and Anton Karas’s unforgettable zither theme — and with its stars in perhaps their most iconic roles: bereted Trevor Howard at his most Britishly military; Alida Valli, here truly enigmatic and Garboesque; and Welles’ Harry Lime, arriving in one of the greatest star entrances ever, and adding the famous “cuckoo clock” speech to Greene’s original script, with the whole topped by its legendary, almost endlessly drawn-out finale shot. Three Oscar nominations: for director Reed, editor Oswald Hafenrichter, and cinematographer Krasker, with a win for the latter; the Grand Prize at Cannes; and the only film on both the AFI and BFI Top 100 lists of, respectively, the greatest American and British films (#1 for the Brits), as well as being named The Greatest Foreign Film of All Time… by the Japanese!? DCP. Approx. 104 mins.
12:30, 4:25, 8:20​

“THE BEST REVELATION IN ALL OF CINEMA.”
– Martin Scorsese
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“THE KIND OF FILM THAT TAKES YOUR BREATH AWAY! The kind that made you want to make movies in the first place. The kind that makes you curse the heavens and secretly wish that you yourself had directed the damn thing instead of that Englishman. The Third Man is a ‘movie’ movie, and those are few and far between.”
– Neil LaBute
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“EXQUISITE!  ENCAPSULATES ALL THE REASONS WE GO TO THE MOVIES!  A CRISP AND HANDSOME RESTORATION!  Welles is so radiant, so enthralling, so unapologetically egotistical…  He's the movie’s real femme fatale, all the more dangerous for being so masculine.”
– Stephanie Zacharek, The Village Voice
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 CRITIC’S PICK!

“FEELS UNLIKE ANY MOVIE OF ITS ERA! This beautiful restoration polishes every canted angle and deep shadow to a glow.   LOOKS LIKE IT WAS FILMED YESTERDAY!”
– Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York

“A MARVEL! IT REALLY MUST BE SEEN ON THE BIG SCREEN, where the shadows can be appreciated in all their glory.”
– Robert Levin, amNewYork
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“Pure, devastating and vital, just as much now as it was then.”
– Matt Noller, Slant Magazine
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“ONE GREAT SCENE AFTER ANOTHER! ONE GREAT SHOT AFTER ANOTHER! I’VE SEEN IT 50 TIMES AND IT’S STILL MAGIC!”
– Roger Ebert

“One of the most intense atmospheres the screen has ever delivered! You can smell the sewers, the fear, and the mistrust in Vienna. A time and place were captured; scenario and locale were stirred, like cream going into dark coffee.”
– David Thomson

“The supreme movie about the night world, the ultimate example of that shining-streets-and-lurking-shadows ‘realism.’”
– David Denby

“Welles haunts each scene: everywhere and invisible, he’s a smirking Cheshire cat of a villain, a superb case study in shameless charisma as poisonous contagion.”
– Ben Walters, Time Out (London)

“No matter how many times I saw it over the years its magic never failed. I kept discovering dark new delights, and the classic moments remained every bit as classic. I can only envy the viewer who gets to encounter Reed’s movie for the first time.”
– David Ansen

THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI

Directed by Orson Welles
Starring Orson Welles & Rita Hayworth

(1948) “Maybe I’ll live so long I’ll forget her. Maybe I’ll die trying.” As a rich man’s wife and her hopeful lover discuss a murder plot at an aquarium, a shark swims between them; a sailor describes a shark’s feeding frenzy as lawyers trade wisecrackers; and a judge wails “This isn’t a football game!” as a courtroom erupts. Vintage Film Noir: Byzantine plot complications ensue – we won’t try to summarize this one – as footloose Irish sailor Orson Welles gets mixed up in murder with crooked lawyer Everett Sloane and his sultry wife Rita Hayworth (then Mrs. Welles), with legendary funhouse hall-of-mirrors shootout finale. DCP. Approx. 87 mins.
2:35, 6:30, 10:25

“A WILD NIGHTMARE WHICH WELLES ILLUSTRATES WITH BAROQUE JUXTAPOSITION AND ILLUSIVE IMAGERY! An unusual Noir film. It can be seen as the complete opposite of the hard-boiled tradition explored by writers like Chandler and Hammett; and yet it contains elements of chaos and obtuseness common to both writers. At the same time, Elsa Bannister [Hayworth’s character] is an original femme fatale, her only rival being Brigid O’Shaughnessy from Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon.”
– Carl Macek, Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style

“A reversion to the style of Citizen Kane: deeply shadowed photography, ogreish close-ups, setting heavy with association…Essentially a part of the current violence cycle, down to its miasma of sexual hatred and its vicious heroine.”
– Dilys Powell (1947)

“Welles’ bizarre set, and the multiple mirrored reflections of the film’s duplicitous husband and wife are equally representative of the uncertain, shifting identities, the essential mysteriousness of personality, of an entire cross-section of Noir characters.”
– Foster Hirsch

“A GLITTERING FILM NOIR! Everett Sloane is an entertainingly outré villain – a two-legged tarantula on crutches – and there are several bold, flashy set pieces in San Francisco, including a chase through a Chinatown theatre, a love scene at the aquarium in Golden Gate Park, and a fun-house shoot-out (quoted at the climax of Woody Allen’s Manhattan Murder Mystery.) In the title role, Rita Hayworth, her hair colored platinum, has both bathing-beauty allure and an exciting sadistic streak – there’s a stiletto hidden in the cheesecake.”
– Michael Sragow, The New Yorker

“Be warned: This is a film that collects obsessives.”
– Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York