Politics and Artistic Integrity

[christoph404]

name='Third Man']Here's the article:



Ministers 'covered up' gun crime - Times Online







Simon

Thanks for leading me to that article Simon. Its quite extraordinary that the Journo who wrote it is presenting figures and stats that are completeley contrdictory and way off the mark compared to any other published statistics including the Home Office's own website! I just don't believe 10 people per day are shot in the UK, I think that journo is being quite creative with his figures.....what a surprise eh? May have to apply Steve Crooks dictum here....don't believe everything you read in the news!

[christoph404]

name='Mark O']I'm intrigued.......what was Harry Lime's speech?

He was exploring the origin of the Cuckoo Clock, but I think he got it all wrong.

[penfold]

name='christoph404']He was exploring the origin of the Cuckoo Clock, but I think he got it all wrong.

Indeed, the cuckoo clock was invented in the Black Forest area of Germany, not in Switzerland. It was on QI so it must be true...

An extreme example of art being condemned by politics is the treatment of German filmmakers of the twenties and thirties....a friend of mine (As ardent an anti-nazi as myself or anyone else) is helping to run a project studying and restoring the silent 20's films of a minor German director called Hans Steinhof. A number of his films have now been seen and studied, they're decent genre pictures by and large, second division but efficiently told thrillers, rom-coms and the like. But many German critics and film historians will not touch the project with a bargepole; because when the exodus of Jewish talent from the German industry occurred in the early thirties, Steinhof, who had nothing to fear, was promoted in the resulting vacuum and was asked to make the films the new leaders of UFA - Goebbels and co - wanted to have made. He was probably delighted in the bigger budgets...but ended up associated with some of the nastier propaganda films made. These I understand not being shown outside of an informed audience, but the earlier apolitical films are tarred unfairly with the same brush. Leni Riefenstahl was as controversial, but at least her work was seen.

[Third Man]

name='christoph404']He was exploring the origin of the Cuckoo Clock, but I think he got it all wrong.

That was when he got off the ferris wheel, it was the one from the top that we where originally talking about, something about metaphorical dots and people and would you miss them if one disappeared.





Simon

[batman]

The actress who Brando sent up to decline his Oscar for Don Corleone was soundly booed when she tried to read out his speech. Roger Moore, who was presenting the Oscar, claimed that in the confusion he took it home!

[batman]

name='Mark O']Forgive my ignorance here, but are we talking about a scene from a Movie?........which one?

The Third Man - Harry Lime's speech to Holly Martens in the ferris wheel scene.



"Then, he smugly delivers his famous, perverse monologue about Switzerland and cuckoo clocks [penned by Welles himself]. With murderous fluency, he contemplates the greater productivity of a warring, strife-ridden culture and civilization that is plagued by warfare and violence, versus a peaceful one. The corruptible Lime cynically justifies his black market criminal activities by recognizing that despite appearances, good and evil (black and white, peace and war, up and down, etc.) are complementary concepts. [Indeed, black marketing becomes a real necessity in an economy that faces severe shortages.] The monstrous Lime, with a charming and beguiling smile, equates the corrupt political intrigues of the Borgias to the artistic triumphs of Michelangelo and da Vinci:



In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly."

[Marky B]

One of my favourite scenes from the film is Bernard Lee trying to chase away the old man selling balloons.

Ta Ta

Marky B

[CaptainWaggett]

On the subject of the Third Man, does any one know exactly why Radford/Wayne morphed into Wilfred Hyde-White? I know there's an early script where his part is two people but were they actually offered the parts? It's years since I've seen it so I can't remember whether H-W is actually in Vienna or not (if he was, that would provide the explanation as Wayne was in a play for most of 1945-46). Maybe Reed felt their presence would turn it into too much of a comedy.



Perhaps I should watch it again...