Maybe it’s the nighttime cold medicine kicking in, but I’m afraid I have very little to say about this film. I could sort of enjoy it, but that distance was there. It wasn’t like the emotional connection I felt watching Casablanca (which this film reminds me of a whole bunch).
I think the dilemma is an important one: How long to preserve loyalty to a friend (or nation, etc)? At what point is one compelled to say, “Okay, forget this, I’m turning you in/abandoning you/etc.” Is loyalty more important than morality?
I do think it’s nice and kind of neat that one of the stars (Orson Welles, the fellow pictured on the poster for this film that hung over my desk during my brief time doing repetitive data entry at the Sarasota Film Society) does not appear in what I estimate the first 2/3 of the film. The whole time I was thinking, “Where is he?”
And I think Orson Welles may have had his Third Man character in mind when appearing in his own F Is For Fake. The hat, the fog, the mystery.
And I think Owen Wilson’s character in The Royal Tenenbaums may be based in part on the protagonist here, although that’s quite possibly only my wishful thinking combined with me maybe being a bit bored.
A bit of trivia from the IMDb:
The only non-American film named as one of “AFI’s 100 Greatest American Movies”.
49 to go.
Just Some Girl cheered this 7 years ago
