The Third Man vs. Touch of Evil with Matt Gourley and Anne Thompson | Movie Death Match

0:08 Have you ever heard of the lone rider of Santa Fe? If it isn't the candy bars, it's the hooch.

0:14 In Italy, for 30 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 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce?

0:30 The cuckoo clock.

0:31 You're listening to Movie Deathmatch. My name is Chris Klemek, and today my firm but fair cinematic jurisprudence shall determine which one of a pair of thematically linked movies, each represented by a passionate and highly credentialed advocate, shall be preserved in perpetuity like Orson Welles' performance as Le Chiffre in the 1967 parody Casino Royale, and which shall be consigned to oblivion like Welles' 131-minute cut of The Magnificent Ambersons.

0:58 I have used that simile before. But it works better for this episode because our Noirvember deathmatch is a showdown between two of the shadowiest, most intrigue-packed films noir from the genre's mid-century peak. Both featuring indelible heel turns from Mr. Wells. He also rewrote and directed one of them. Is Mr.

1:18 Martins engaged on our new book? Yes. It's a murder story. It's based on fact. It's called The Third Man.

1:31 1949's The Third Man dropped us into the diplomatic phantom zone of Vienna, Austria, three years after the end of World War II, still very much showing the scars, bombed about a bit, as the opening narration tells us, with a screenplay by Graham Greene with contributions from Alexander Korda, Orson Welles, and Carol Reed, who directed The Third Man as the very model of what Reed called a comedy thriller.

1:51 Heard of Harry Lyme?

1:53 Best friend I ever had.

1:55 1958's Touch of Evil elevated Whit Masterson's pulp novel Badge of Evil, a better title in my opinion, into a rich study of police corruption and hero worship and racism thanks to the rewrite Wells did, albeit without additional pay, as a condition of directing the film. He'd been cast in the role of crooked police captain Hank Quinlan before that, come for Touch of Evil's bravura camerawork, stay for the parade of old Wells' chums from his radio days and his USO shows. and for its hypnotic, tonal contrast of broad comedy and existential menace.

2:27 Only the offbeat, original, creative powers of Orson Welles could bring you so suspenseful, so gripping, so different a drama of love threatened by vengeance.

2:37 Mike may be spoiling some of your.

2:39 Mike? My husband, yeah. And if you're trying to scare me into calling him off, let me tell you something.

2:45 Those are the films. Now, let's meet our passionate and highly credentialed advocates. Representing the third man is a figure I like to think of as the Orson Welles or at least the Vernon Welles of comedy podcasts. He is part of the original medical team behind Super Ego celebrating its 20th year. He is one half of the beloved 007 podcast James Bonding with co-creator Matt Myra. He is the same half of the horror themed pod with Gorley and Rust. With his spouse, Amanda Fun Buns Lund, he created the documentary podcast Keys to the Kingdom about working at Disney Parks. He is probably best known today as producer and, along with world's worst assistant, Sona Mobsessian, one of Conan's on-mic and on-camera banter buddies on Conan O'Brien

3:28 Needs a Friend. I'm far too late ever to get Ian Fleming or H.R. Giger on this show, but I am delighted to have Matt Gourley, PYT. Welcome, Matt.

3:38 Oh, man, Chris, it's great to be here. It's great to be talking about two movies I love. This is not going to be easy for me. You're making me choose the children. And I won't make the famous movie allusion to the choice of choosing a children, but we all know what I'm talking about. That's a film for another episode.

3:55 Sure.

3:55 Well, now you recently had a second children, right? So now you really know pain. I did.

4:01 I went from child to children and I'm in the throes of it right now. She's only just turned eight and the teeth are a poppin' and the older child's bringing home all the colds and the sleep is not.

4:14 A poppin'. So before we introduce your opponent, I want to ask you quickly, had you already accepted Conan's offer of employment when you discovered that he had been selling forged passports and bootleg penicillin prior to faking his own death?

4:29 Yes, the whole thing has been a horrible ruse.

4:32 And I am an innocent pulp.

4:35 Writer, just traveling my way through war-torn Europe as just a babe in the woods, a pilgrim in an unholy land. And If there's any blame to go around in any subject, let's lay it at the feet of Conan O'Brien.

4:51 Yes, good. Well, I mean, just to avoid any legal problems or any trouble at work for you, Matt, I want to make clear, of course, I was being facetious when I said that Conan O'Brien had harmed sick children by peddling watered down medicine to hospitals. That was absolutely a joke. You can disclaim it.

5:07 I won't.

5:07 No, no.

5:08 I mean, it was actually Jay Leno who did that. We know that.

5:11 We know that.

5:11 Well, I mean, Harry Lime, Conan's Orange. There's like a citrus thing going.

5:16 Oh, my God.

5:17 You can't ignore, you know.

5:22 It's true. Writing for 1958's Touch of Evil is editor-at-large for IndieWire and the author of The $ 11 Billion Year from Sundance to the Oscars. As a young publicist at United Artists, she worked on campaigns for Rocky, Network, Bound for Glory, Carrie, Annie Hall... and later was a unit publicist on one of the very cultiest of cult classics, 1984's The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, a film we will discuss on this show one day.

5:49 She has been on staff at Entertainment Weekly, Premiere, The Hollywood Reporter, and Variety, all before she founded her widely-read blog, Thompson on Hollywood, which brought her to IndieWire, where she is now co-host of the Screen Talk podcast. She is Anne Thompson. Welcome, Anne.

6:05 Happy to be here. I'm not as funny as Matt. Be prepared.

6:09 Well, not with that attitude.

6:10 I'm not as well-read or well-versed in the world of cinema as Anne, whom I am a fan of.

6:16 Oh, thank you.

6:17 Touché.

6:18 I watch the Conan thing. I watch that. I love it, the podcast.

6:22 Oh, thank you.

6:22 I thought you looked familiar.

6:24 Okay, there you go. Anne, do you have a clairvoyant leg that aches when you're on the trail of a showbiz scoop, maybe?

6:31 You know, I have a nose, and it's the kind of thing where I'm at a Golden Globe party, and Connor's story is on the other side of the room, and I make a beeline for him, and I introduce myself to him. It's that kind of thing. It's a sixth sense that you have to do that and get the story.

6:52 Now, did you always have that sixth sense, or did it come about only after you took a bullet intended for your Screen Talk co-host, Ryan Letantio?

7:02 Ryan and I are absolutely in sync, and we love doing what we're doing, and I will take a bullet for him anytime.

7:11 Oh, that's sweet. We all yearn to have a collaborator like that. Boy, even though collaborator, that's not maybe the right word to talk about a post-war.

7:23 Movie.

7:23 Matt, what is your relationship to The Third Man? Do you remember when you first saw it? I do.

7:29 Actually, it's a late stage romance for me. To me, I think the third man, I was always aware of it growing up being a film fan, but I didn't by any means have a, like for lack of a better term, a classical film education. So the third man existed with me in the ether, like the thin man and even the tin man at a certain point, I kind of conflated them all. And then I actually went through all the Thin Man movies first. Just the camaraderie I felt with people who wanted to pour a martini at any event was heaven for me. And then my buddy, James Bladen, who's an often podcast partner of mine, said basically like, this is ridiculous.

8:07 You need to sit down and you need to watch the third man. You of all people are going to love this movie. And I did.

8:14 I think that's what's so beautiful about this movie. I won't get into the details of it all, but it didn't strike me right away. It was my second, third, fifth, 100th watch where it infiltrated my bones.

8:25 And became one of my favorite films.

8:27 Yeah.

8:28 Well, so The Thin Man is one of the last of my partner and I, we always do a New Year's Eve movie marathon, you know, once we aged out of going out on New Year's Eve. And it was usually like, here's some celebrated release from the year ending that we didn't get to before, but it always ends with a thin man because they're all, I think it's only the, is it only the second one that's set on New Year's Eve, maybe? The first one's a Christmas movie, right?

8:53 I'm trying to remember.

8:54 Why do I think the first one's New Year's Eve?

8:56 I don't know. I think you might be right. I'm usually two martinis in when it's happening. No, exactly. These come several cocktails in, but they're- I rarely finish the film each time I watch it. Same. No, these are like 90-minute movies that we end up watching the second half of.

9:10 My daughter is named Nora.

9:13 After?

9:14 She's named after Nora Charles.

9:17 My daughter's named Martini.

9:19 Okay.

9:21 And you put Touch of Evil on your sight and sound ballot. Now, just to give listeners a bit more of a peek at your taste, the Hitchcock movie on your ballot is Notorious. Your Kurosawa pick is Ron. Your Howard Hawks is Bringing Up Baby. Your Powell and Pressburger is I Know Where I'm Going! And your Orson Welles is not Citizen Kane, but Touch of Evil.

9:42 Citizen Kane doesn't need any help.

9:44 Okay, fair point, fair point. Now, what is your history with Touch of Evil?

9:48 So Touch of.

9:49 Evil is something that I saw in film school at NYU. I was in NYU Cinema Studies. And I have to admit that I must have seen the original. version of it. And so I will lie down and die in defense of Henry Mancini's opening score with the incredible three and a half minute, one take opener.

10:11 I'm with you. I'm with you.

10:18 Oh, my God. Orson Welles wanted that taken out. He took it out. Those were his 58-page notes of all the changes he wanted to make. And Walter Murch delivered. But I will defend Henry Mancini to the death, maybe because it's what I saw in the first place and what I fell in love with. So this movie is dark and nasty and brutal and offbeat and noir-ish. And it's also the last movie Orson Welles directed. So we love Touch of Evil, and we'll get into it in greater depth.

10:57 Yes. I think the first four pages of that memo were just take out the music in very large font. So it gets a little padded.

11:05 No, I've seen it the other way, and I.

11:08 Get it. Yeah, we're getting ahead of ourselves here, right? The merch restoration from 1998, it's all diegetic music at the beginning, right?

11:18 Correct.

11:19 All right, well, you're already getting a preview of some of the points of distinction we'll be chopping up, so let's get into it. The Third Man, Touch of Evil. The Third Man is the one I have in my letterboxd for, but they're both among my favorites. Every time either one of these gets an upgraded physical media release, I buy it again. Shadows have never been darker. Motives have never looked murkier. Angles have never been dutcher. And in these two Orsonian mid-century masterpieces... Which one has cast a longer shadow over the past 70 years of cinema?

11:50 Which one is the more revealing study of human frailty? Which shall endure once the ritual of justice by verbal combat we perform here today is complete? Those are the stakes. This is a movie death match. Matt Gourley, are you prepared? No, but I'm ready. Anne Thompson, are you ready?

12:08 I'm prepared. Excellent.

12:12 A reminder about our patented, highly flawed scoring system. At the conclusion of each of your responses, I will award you between zero and three points, citing parts of your statement that I, in my arbitrary way, find especially cogent, illuminating, or funny. I'll give you a scorecard update at the end of each of our three rounds. So let's roll right into round one. Opening statements and movies and their time.

12:34 This is where we focus, kind of, on how these films were received when first released. You each have the option, but not the obligation, to deliver a strictly timed sub-60-second opening statement that is less than a third of the temporal real estate occupied by the opening shot of Touch of Evil. That is also five seconds less than the Carol Reed voiceover at the beginning of The Third Man, you know, just to give you a yardstick. Anne, would you like to make an opening statement?

13:00 I want to be crystal clear. These movies are both great. They are apples and oranges.

13:06 One.

13:08 Is a classic British expressionist style shot in post-war Vienna. Both have extraordinary cinematography, extraordinary score, stylish direction, and great Wells performances at their center. Why would I favor Touch of Evil? There's nothing else like it. It's a bravura filmmaking. It is bravura filmmaking. It's innovative. The use of spatial cinematography is non-parade. And of course, We talked about this already.

13:37 There's that three and a half minute opener.

13:39 You're well under your time, and I have always wondered how to pronounce non-pariah. So thank you for that. Me too. I have learned. Matt, would you like to make an opening statement? Yes, I would.

13:50 Chris, you mentioned which one of these films casts a longer shadow, and I think the answer is there in the celluloid when we see the shadow.

13:59 Of Harry Lyme, Orson Welles.

14:01 Much mysterious character creeping through the cobblestone streets of Vienna.

14:06 What kind of a spy do you think you are, Satchelfoot?

14:09 What are you tailing me for?

14:11 Come out, come out, whoever you are.

14:13 This movie to me, and I love A Touch of Evil too, is a battle of two Orson Welles. Everybody arguably loves Elvis, but are you a skinny Elvis or are you a fat Elvis? And what we're dealing here with is very much the same thing. Not just in stature. We have a slim, young, fine-looking Orson Welles in The Third Man and a larger, prosthetically hobbled Orson Welles in A Touch of Evil. Both have their virtues. But one is sleeker, one is subtler, one is less on the prosthetic nose, and I think more rewarding over time. If a touch of evil gets you in the door, the third man keeps you.

14:57 Outstanding right on time. All right, so I'm going to start us off talking about the mise-en-scene in these two films, which one drops you into its locale, its environs more effectively. And Anne, I... I'll admit, I think you have the tougher job on this point, so I will start with you. The AFI catalog entry for Touch of Evil says Wells considered shooting it in Tijuana, but either Universal or the Mexican government vetoed that.

15:21 They put him in Venice.

15:23 Yes, Venice, California, dressed up to look like the border 150 miles or so down the coast. Los Robles, the American border town there in Touch of Evil, is fictional. So how can the Venice for Los Robles in Touch of Evil compete with the Vienna for Vienna in The Third Man?

15:43 Well, I think what he does is he gets his people into moving cars and he gets them crowded into rooms and he uses overhead ceilings coming down on his characters and he's just manipulating the space. in this extraordinary way. It's not so much... The opening shot really does look like Vienna, I have to say, and it's used very well.

16:06 But I wouldn't say that the locations have much to do with this movie, really. It's more about the use of the camera, the use of the space, and what he does with it. And again, nobody does it better.

16:17 Oh, boy. Wow, you're stealing a line from that there, maybe. But that's what we want. It's a dirty, dirty damn game, and you gotta play it dirtily. Very nice. Matt, The Third Man was by some accounts the first British feature to be shot largely on location, although they did do a lot of studio work at Shepperton. Also, Robert Krasker won an Academy Award for his cinematography on this movie.

16:40 Talk to me about the sense of place you feel in The Third Man.

16:43 Well, it's a tired cliche to say that a city plays a character in a movie, but I'm going to just throw that, just that to be damned, because in this movie, if ever it was appropriate, it's Vienna. They're literally there, post-war, shooting contemporarily in a post-war story with the rubbled buildings.

17:04 I never knew the old Vienna before the war with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm. Constantinople suited me better. I really got to know it in the classic period of the black market. We'd run anything if people wanted it enough and had the money to pay. Of course, a situation like that does tempt amateurs, but they can't stay the course like a professional. Now the city, it's divided into four zones, you know, each occupied by a power.

17:30 And Krasker's cinematography and the tilted Dutch angles kind of either give you an equilibrium to or skew you from the twisting cobblestone paths that are never flat.

17:42 They're all crooked.

17:43 The sewers, everything to give you that sense of mystery and it upsets your system to watch it. A city so beautiful, a city in ruins, a city shot in high contrast black and white. Good versus evil, but the tilted medium between them brings you the gray. And it really is, second maybe to Wells' mysterious character that's coming up, one of the things that keeps you engaged just as much as Trevor Howard or Joseph Cotton. It's just beautiful.

18:15 I don't think you can understate Vienna's role in this film.

18:18 Yeah, probably we've all heard the anecdote about the askew angles about how William Wyler saw the movie and then sent Carol Reed a spirit level and said, just put that on the camera next time. Help you out there. All right. Very compelling. Very compelling. So Anne already referred to the opening, that three minute, 20 second crane shot in Touch of Evil. Now, Anne, you were kind of shouting out the Initially released 1958 version with the Mancini score and the opening titles. I tend to favor the, I think just because the 98 Walter Murch restoration, according to Wells' memo, was the first version that I saw where we get the diegetic music as the camera passes various juke joints and cars with radios playing and bits

19:06 of conversation.

19:07 And you hear the bomb blast.

19:08 Yes, the ticking of the bomb.

19:10 She hears something. What's that noise?

19:14 No, it's exactly the Hitchcock definition of suspense, right? We fade in on the bomb being placed in the trunk of the car and then follow the car for almost three and a half minutes.

19:24 So.

19:25 You know, this is the one or this is the one that gets referenced all over the place. Our previous deathmatch was Halloween, and Debra Hill was thinking of the opening of Touch of Evil when they were shooting Halloween 20 years later.

19:36 Well, Halloween is famous for the Steadicam, and according to Stallone, it was also used on Rocky.

19:43 I just saw I Play Rocky. Since you were a publicist, I was going to ask, wait, is that really the invention of the Steadicam? and features?

19:52 And then there's the handheld camera, which Wells deployed in this one. I mean, it's the first. All the camera work works. From the opener to the rest of the movie is just stuff you've never seen before. They never shot in a moving car with a camera before without using like, you know, rear projector or whatever. And the way that that opening shot moves following one way and then you've got the two people, the couple, Vargas is the newly married couple. waltzing across the border, happy, humming, you know, really deliriously pleased with themselves. And bam, the whole thing blows up. And again, the diegetic version of it is fine. I'm just fond of the Mancini.

20:39 It's what I grew up with.

20:50 Uh, you folks are American citizens?

20:51 I am, yes.

20:52 Where were.

20:53 You born, miss?

20:57 So, contrasting that, The Third Man has a beautifully efficient opening, you know, that voiceover narration from Carol Reed. There is an alternate where Joseph Cotton's Holly Martins is doing the voiceover, but the one that I know, which I guess is the British version, is Carol Reed. I never knew the old Vienna Before the Wall with its Strauss music, its glamour, easy chomp. Setting up very efficiently this absurd situation of this multinational police force that all speaks different languages trying to police a city that they don't know. A situation like that does tempt amateurs. So who is speaking? Don't worry about it. It just drops you. I wonder how many other directors would be like, can I just start

21:37 my movie by talking for 65 seconds to sort of set up the given circumstances here? Matt, tell me why this beats the fancy one-er. at the top of the third man oh i can't.

21:49 I think this is one area where i need to cede ground because that one or in touch of evil is not just incredible for its technical aspects but also just what it does for the story and to pull you in this narration in the beginning of the third man you know everybody talks about the trouble with the.

22:07 Blade runner narration but.

22:09 I love this because I love Carol Reed's just sort of, you know, happy-go-lucky. Isn't it cute that all the countries are working together?

22:16 Vienna doesn't really look any worse than a lot of other European cities. Bombed about a bit. I like it, but I don't know that I feel like I want to defend it. It does feel tacked on. It feels purely expositional. And I feel like there would have been a much more elegant way to do it in world with Joseph Cotton learning from any number of the other characters these things have.

22:49 Because he's a stranger in a strange land. He would have needed to know this. He's an author.

22:53 He's not a foreign correspondent. It's believable he wouldn't have known these things. So I would like to officially cede this point, at least.

23:00 Oh, wow.

23:01 Thank you, Dan. We're already at the end of round one, where I have us at the end of round one. I gave Anne a full three points for a successful defense of how Touch of Evil's Framing and use of Venice really means more than being in the physical space of Vienna, how it turns that limitation into a strength.

23:26 So three points for that, but also three points for Matt on that question, discussing how the Dutch angles in The Third Man upset the system and bring the moral shades of gray into the story. Anne's point in question two, first use of a shot in a moving car that was not one of those process shots or rear projection shots.

23:46 Making Top Gun Maverick possible. I think it's the daytime convertible shot where Charlton Heston is operating the camera himself because they couldn't fit a camera operator in the car. So three points there. Matt, I'm still giving you a point for good gentlemanly conduct.

24:04 Yes.

24:05 Even though you ceded the point there. So that's going to put Anne in the lead. Six to four at the end of round one. But there's lots of time to catch up here. Round two is the movies in our time. This is where we consider what the films have come to represent in the more than four decades since they were new.

24:35 All right.

24:35 We have to discuss Charlton Heston's casting as Mexican lawman Mike Vargas. Now, it was Heston who suggested to Universal that they invite Orson Welles, whom they'd already cast as Quinlan, to direct Touch of Evil, which to me is an undeniable contribution above his very sturdy performance in the film.

24:54 I think he is good in the movie. But evidently it was Welles who decided to swap the nationalities of the Mike and Susan characters from the novel Badge of Evil.

25:05 Right.

25:05 So it sounds like Heston came attached to the project, right? He was a stronger anchor than Wells. So the fact that Wells, once he gets involved, says to Heston, I'd like to make you Mexican like that, that sounds strange to us. But of course, it was commonplace in those days and for decades after for white actors to be cast of persons of color. Indeed, it was almost 30 years after Touch of Evil when Jeanette Goldstein played Private Vasquez in Aliens, another movie obsession Matt and I share.

25:36 But yes, a lovely, freckled Jewish lady wearing bronzer and shoe polish to play a Latinx Marine gunner in a movie that's supposed to be set in the 22nd century sometime. So what can you say other than just it was the time in defense of... The name is Vargas.

25:53 Hey, Jim.

25:54 See who's here?

25:55 Sure, Mr.

25:56 Vargas.

25:57 Out on the trail of another dope ring? Out on the trail of a chocolate soda for my wife.

26:01 Your wife?

26:02 Dally your bride, officer. I think Charlton had... First, we give him points for making the suggestion to hire Wells, which they did.

26:10 Certainly.

26:10 And it gave him permission to write the screenplay over, which he did. And he does a great job as Vargas. I have no trouble with it. I think he's very sexy and confident and... swaggering as the Mexican diplomat. And it's a great contrast with Hank Quinlan, the disgusting, corrupt, you know, he's the hero. He's the hero and he loves his wife. And when she is treated really badly, we'll get to the supporting characters later. I hope we have an opportunity to do that, Chris. Are we going to?

26:46 Yeah, well.

26:47 Because I think Touch of Evil beats the third man on supporting characters, if I may be so bold.

26:52 That's a point I can't cede. All right, all right, good. Well, we're definitely putting that back in if it was ever out.

26:58 So I think he pulls it off, and I think he's fine as Vargas.

27:02 Yeah, so on the featurette on my Kino Lorber 4K of Touch of Evil, which I infer was shot sometime in the 90s, around the time of the 98 restoration that was shown at Cannes, There's an interview with Heston where he says, you know, with 40 years of hindsight, if he could do the role again, he would play Vargas with just a trace of an accent. That's what he came up with. Yes, that was his reflection. You know, having more than half his life earlier at that point, played a Mexican on screen. He says he and Wells had decided that Vargas had an Ivy League education in the U.S. and his speech would reflect that, which is why Vargas just sounds like Moses in Touch of Evil.

27:43 This whole setup stinks.

27:45 Who the hell does Quinlan think he is, hanging a murder weapon on my wife? I agree with you. It is a good performance. So, Matt, the third man does not really have a similar casting hurdle for us to get over, other than the fact that at least one Austrian actor in the film learned his lines phonetically in the tradition of Gert Frobe and so many of the great dubbed Bond villains and Bond girls. So I'm going to throw you a real softball here. Sorry, Anne. The third man's honorable lawmen are Trevor Howard's Major Calloway and his right hand, Sergeant Payne, played by the great Bernard Lee.

28:23 who would go on to greater fame in subsequent films if you'd like to fill in some gaps for me there. I take full responsibility for the fact that I have been unable to identify the name of the Spokane Spokesman Review correspondent who called Mr. Lee, quote, a real roast beef and Yorkshire pudding type of British actor. That's great.

28:45 In the absence of a problematic bit of casting you need to defend in the 21st century, I'm just going to ask you to name your top three roast beef and Yorkshire pudding type British actors. Oh, man.

28:58 Oh, I have a whole smorgasbord of these people. This is just my favorite. Oh, God, you got me on the spot. And 83,000 names came together and all conflated their first and their last. Michael Jayston from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

29:13 Oh, my God. God, you can't do this to me. Hold on. Hold on.

29:18 I'm telling you, Chris, don't do that to me.

29:21 Keep talking, Anne.

29:23 Keep talking. Buy me some time.

29:27 Well, Ian Bannon, I always go back to the BBC Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy because it's so chock full of those people.

29:33 Ian Richardson. Oh, I know.

29:36 Bernard Hepton, who plays Toby Esterhazy in Tinker Taylor, Soldier, Spy. He's also in I, Claudius. He has that like somehow a British person got a perfect Roman Aquiline nose and he looks like Ian Fleming and he's so stodgy, but fun and has a twinkle in his eye. He's one of my favorite actors. He would have fit in the third man so well. He could have played any number of Of these dubious characters.

29:59 And I wish he had. All right. Excellent. Well, you rolled with that. Oh, Beryl Reed, too.

30:06 She's another one that's amazing in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

30:09 Wait, wait. Beryl Reed?

30:11 Right?

30:11 Isn't that right?

30:12 B-E-R-Y-L, I think.

30:13 Yeah.

30:13 Wow.

30:14 Okay.

30:14 I know.

30:14 I was pitching to name my daughter Beryl, B-E-R-Y-L, and my.

30:20 Wife very wisely said no. Beryl Reed is not the drag queen Carol Reed that showed up on set to- To prank. No, Anna's shaking her head.

30:31 We digress.

30:32 Yes.

30:33 This is a digression forward show. Okay, so this is probably the most boring way I could come at approaching the casting in these two films, but I'm just going to ask. Let's all consider which Wells villain performance is greater, murderous black marketeer Harry Lime or crooked cop? Hank Quinlan, I love that Harry Lyme is in the penicillin racket.

30:55 You know, it's not heroin or anything. It's an equally deadly and destructive trade that apparently Graham Greene got from a reporter for The Times of London who had written a story about the bootleg penicillin trade in the post-war environment there. One of the many details he picked up on his Selznick and Korda-funded research trip to Vienna. And why is Quinlan the better Wells Heal?

31:20 Well, as you mentioned earlier, he is prosthetic enhanced. And what's so interesting about Hank Quinlan is that just as this is the last directing job that he had, it's also almost like looking into the future. It's like Hank Quinlan is what Ellerson Wells is going to become in some way. And so he was gaining weight, but he wasn't like that. So he creates this extraordinary guy with the coat and the cane and the hat and the sort of greasy, gross features.

31:56 I didn't recognize you.

31:59 You should lay out those candy bars.

32:01 And he forces you, the director does, forces you to look at him with the ceilings coming down on him and the shadows coming down on him. And he's just a gross, pathetic, in some ways, creature.

32:13 I say I wish it was your chili I was getting fat on.

32:18 Anyway, you're sure looking good.

32:20 I love the way Marlena Dietrich looks at him. This is my favorite character in the movie. And she looks at him and she says, You're a mess, honey.

32:30 Yeah.

32:32 And then there's a moment where he asks her to give him his... She's a madam, a fortune. She says, you're all used up. Your time is all used up. It's done. You know, he's over. So this is a pathetically... bereft and lost and destroyed man. And even his beloved sidekick, Menzies, played by Joseph Kaleo, so great, even he gives up on him and betrays him.

32:59 Yeah.

33:00 And kills him.

33:01 Spoiler.

33:03 Sorry. No.

33:04 I mean, Quinlan shoots him first, which is the part I always forget about. That's right. I did not remember that.

33:09 You're right to remind us of that.

33:11 Quinlan shoots Menzies with Vargas's gun in an attempt to frame Vargas. And that is a major plot deal that I never remember. I would have forgotten it had I not watched the film Touch of Evil again this weekend. Yeah, I kept trying to frame a question around Marlena Dietrich here because I have this weird... thing where I, Dietrich's most well-known lines from Touch of Evil, you know, your future is all used up, you know, and then at the very end, he was a man, what does it matter what you say about people? I always conflate those or mistakenly ascribe those to Ada Valli's role as Anna Schmidt in The Third Man, and I do not know why.

33:51 I mean, she does say some pretty fatalistic things. At one point, she, and I think it's the first time she speaks with Holly Martins in her dressing room backstage. She actually says, I wish I were dead, too. But I don't know why. That's this bizarre mental block. Again, these are two films that I revisit regularly.

34:10 According to some reports, Marlena Dietrich thought this was one of her best performances, which I agree. I actually love this performance. And given the amount of screen time she has, which is tiny, these are the quotes that everybody remembers. These are the quotes that everybody comes back with. It's like the most important lines in the movie.

34:28 I think she has even less screen time in Touch of Evil than Wells has in The Third Man. But yeah, she makes such an impression.

34:36 That's your vulnerability, Matt, if I may be so bold. Go for it. Go for it.

34:40 Yeah. All right, Matt. Well, I'm glad you set me up that way, actually. Yeah. So tell us why Harry Lyme is the healiest heel.

34:49 Well, I think it's precisely his amount of screen time that is a feature and not a bug and an asset because a little Wells goes a long way. And I love Orson Welles. But with all the great histrionic greats, Pacino, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, they were never better than when they had a director to pull them back and to limit them a little bit. So unbridled Orson Welles in A Touch of Evil is enough. The man is enough as an actor with his prosthetics, with his delivery.

35:19 He's wonderful.

35:20 But also as a director favoring himself, I think you get a subtler Wells in the third man and a more believable Wells, less melodramatic and more charming Wells that will pull you in and actually feel a little of what Holly Martins is feeling when he himself has to shoot Wells just like Menzies does.

35:43 Exactly. Who did you tell about me?

35:46 I told the police.

35:47 Unwise, Holly.

35:48 And Anna?

35:49 Unwise.

35:51 Did the police believe you?

35:54 You don't care anything at all about Anna, do you?

35:56 I've got quite a lot on my mind.

35:57 You wouldn't do anything.

35:58 What do you want me to do?

35:59 Be reasonable.

36:00 Somebody else didn't expect me to give myself up.

36:02 And I think you're left with a little bit more a feeling of loss of humanity in this film than the kind of stark and melodramatic version of which I find enjoyable in A Touch of Evil, but I find the depth of this relationship and Wells able to rewrite his own dialogue, as history has told us, but not to rewrite the film and not to control the film, to be a part of Carol Reed's vision and work within his role and write the cuckoo clock speech and perform it the way he wanted is the perfect amount.

36:39 What the fella said is... Mentally, for 30 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 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

36:58 So long, Holly.

37:00 A touch of evil could have used a touch of wealth.

37:06 Wow. Yeah, I don't think any of the additional material. Well, obviously, since they brought in a different director, Harry Keller, I think, to shoot some clarifying stuff after Wells had been locked out of the editing room and, you know, left the country to start making Don Quixote. So obviously, Wells is not in any of those. So the longer version of Touch of Evil, I think the merch restoration runs, it's like 18 minutes longer than the Universal cut. And Obviously, none of those 18 minutes are additional wells. The other thing, a detail I want to squeeze in here is, according to Steven Soderbergh, who did a commentary track for the Criterion Blu-ray of The Third Man with Tony Gilroy, I'm trying to remember what they were working on together, you know,

37:56 roughly 20 years ago, and that edition of The Third Man would have been issued later. So you watch this movie with the two of these guys and Soderbergh is just tossing out anecdotes about the production. I think most of them are from a book called In Search of the Third Man by Charles Drazen that Soderbergh does give up the title at one point. But he says that assistant director Guy Hamilton, who, of course, goes on to direct Goldfinger and four Bonds on his resume.

38:23 Yeah. Jeffrey Keene, the minister of defense in many Bond movies, is in this.

38:27 Briefly as well. Oh, man. OK. Where is he? I can't remember. He's some officer of some kind. He just has a couple of lines. But apparently Guy Hamilton had the unenviable job of trying to get Wells to show up to set and was also Wells's double pretty much. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, where we see Wells running a lot of times. I knew he was double, but I didn't know it was Guy Hamilton. It was Guy Hamilton.

38:52 And again, according to Drazen via Soderbergh, Carol Reed asked when he saw that Hamilton did not have the same shoulder breadth that Orson Welles has. He's like, well, we're going to have you keep the coat hanger in your trench coat. Yeah, so anytime you see Harry running, particularly if he's running away from camera, that's probably Guy Hamilton.

39:13 Yeah.

39:17 Thank you. All right. I've been catering to Matt quite a bit. So, Anne, let me cede your very reasonable wish. Do you want to talk about just the overall company featured in Touch of Evil?

39:39 Yeah.

39:40 I was just taking some notes, and it just kind of blew my mind how many... great little bits there are. I mean, we all know about Dennis Weaver going crazy in the hotel, you know, a great piece of over-the-top character acting.

39:56 We got another thing coming.

39:58 Somebody's been monkeying in with them purists. They think I'm going to fix them. They got another thing coming. It ain't my job to fix them, even if I know how.

40:08 Could you show me, please, to my wife's cabin?

40:12 No.

40:12 No. There is nobody here.

40:17 We all know about Mercedes McCambridge. She's playing a Mexican, too, with a very broad Mexican accent.

40:25 Let me stay. I want to watch.

40:28 Butch is the word Roger Ebert used to describe her in his.

40:32 Charlton Heston was her coach.

40:34 Good review. And so you have, as I said, Joseph Kalea, who's a great character actor for many, many, many years. And I think that they just all deliver on each of their moments. Dietrich, of course, we talked about her already. Each one is choice. Akim Timuroff. Akim Timuroff is so great as Grandy.

40:57 Uncle Grandy, yeah, with the unreliable hairpiece.

41:00 There you go. There you go. And Ray Collins from Citizen Kane. He shows up as the DA. So back to Dennis Weaver. One of the things that we wonder is, did his skittish character, performance inform anthony perkins two years later is that possible you know so in psycho but that's you know that's an incredible ensemble that he put together there many of whom he'd worked with in radio before.

41:26 Yes also the joseph cotton cameo i forgot about in the fake beard i think we only see him twice maybe but he's there all right well you know can't argue with that matt the uh the third man ensemble what do you got buddy Well, I just found myself coming back to this movie often for these characters, specifically some of the supporting characters, just that you're led to believe Trevor Howard from the beginning is almost a bureaucrat before he's an officer. He's going to be that bureaucrat that never listens, that never has any sympathy for our main character who's screaming out, we've got to do something, we've got to do something. And there's nothing more satisfying to me in a movie than when someone who's ostensibly

42:06 a heel turns back the other way and listens to the main character, it's so gratifying.

42:11 And the fact that they remain amusingly contentious at times, but their teamwork together and their camaraderie at the end actually fills in a spot for me when Alita Vali's character snubs him walking on by. I'm comforted with the fact that he had a friendship with Calloway. And then, of course, it's so great to see Bernard Lee playing Payne, you're so used to him as a kind of patriarchal M in the Bond films, but he's got a deference to Holly Martins, even though he has to punch him in the face, and the sweetness of him. And you really feel it for him when he meets his end.

42:58 I just found myself In the best situation of narrative drama, and that is when you miss a character when a movie's over, I wanted to hang out with these people. I wanted to be with them. I wanted to be friends with this group.

43:11 I don't think I can say the same about my game.

43:15 I know. And there's an upside to that as well. There's fun watching characters that are sinister, and you get that with Harry Lyme, but you're also drawn to Harry Lyme. So this movie pushes and pulls you in the best subtle ways possible.

43:28 That's a great movie shit.

43:30 Yeah.

43:30 I mean, that is maybe one of my favorite moments of slapstick comedy in The Third Man when Sergeant Payne, Bernard Lee, has to sock Holly after he makes a run at Major Calloway. And Cotton just kind of catches this banister of a bar booth or something and like swings around right back to standing up. And Payne just goes on praising his novels as though they haven't just had any kind of physical altercation at all.

43:55 It's the most polite punch in cinema history.

43:58 Yeah, it really is. It is. And, you know, the fact that we know Bernard Lee later as a Royal Navy Admiral who needs constant reassurance about how British he is. You know, he's just so insecure.

44:11 Yeah.

44:12 About the sum total of his Britishness. I don't know.

44:15 He shows up because he's the grocer in The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. And he just has his fingers in all the great, you know, the third man isn't a spy film necessarily, but just that great European thrillers of the mid-century.

44:28 I just love it.

44:28 Yeah.

44:29 Yeah. Spy Who Came In From the Cold is Richard Burton as a, you know, some ambiguity, I guess, about whether he really is a washed up drunk ex-spy or whether he's just playing at being a drunk washed up ex-spy. It's both.

44:41 Yeah.

44:41 A lot of negotiation.

44:42 They're going to do that one again. I'm looking forward to it.

44:44 They wrapped on that already.

44:46 Really?

44:47 I'm so excited.

44:48 Matthew McFadden playing Smiley and Charlie Hunnam is playing Alec Lemus. Oh, wow.

44:54 Well, no, that sounds great. I mean, I would not want to have to negotiate with Bernard Lee for what groceries I could afford. All right. Well, you know, we haven't moved the needle too much here. As we come to the end of round two, I still have Anne ahead of me. 15 to 13. Full three points initially for praising Heston's confident and swaggering, if questionably by contemporary standards, cast performance. But Matt was right there with Michael Jaston, Ian Bannon, and Bernard Hepton.

45:27 That was impressive.

45:28 For his Yorkshire... That's embarrassing. Beef Wellington, whatever it was, British actors. With the... You know, no, wait, I'm going to revise. I'm going to say... Anne is only ahead by one point because I'm giving you a bonus point for Beryl Reed, Matt. Well, that's all her and not me. She deserves it.

45:46 Oh, it's a squeaker.

45:47 Yes, truly, truly. But Anne's celebration of the marvelous company Wells put together for Touch of Evil. Apparently, you know, just calling in a lot of favors, getting a lot of old friends to work for scale. One of the stories Peter Bogdanovich tells about Will's account of this movie is that apparently some of the Universal guys were seeing his dailies and they're like, wait, is that Marlena Dietrich?

46:12 Did we make a deal with Marlena? Is she in this? Yeah. And then apparently when they wanted to promote her presence in the film, they did have to pay her a bit more than scale.

46:21 So that they could credit her.

46:22 Yeah.

46:23 Yeah, yeah.

46:23 Put her on the billboard.

46:24 Again, I'm just going off of what Bogdanovich says here, but he claims that when Wells would do his USO magic show for the troops, he would saw Marlena Dietrich in half. So they were old pals. Just that sentence.

46:37 I love that. Yes.

46:39 All right, so that is how we end up with a nail-biter game with Anne Thompson in the lead, 15 to 14, at the end of round two. Barreling into round three, the movies for all time, where we consider how these films echo through eternity. Which one of these two films did more for Zither music? I'm kidding. That's not a real question. Okay. Okay. I want to consider the finales of these movies. Which one gives us a more powerful finale or a more dramatic shift in perspective?

47:19 We have the third man's sewer chase, a mix of that amazing Vienna location photography and apparently some recreation on sets back in Shepardston. But certainly an amazing set piece. And then the more sort of mournful resolution of The third man, right? That famous shot where Holly is waiting for Anna to stop and talk to him in that long take.

47:44 Don't say too much.

47:46 I need to talk about it. Yeah, good, good, good. Okay. All right. Well, you're slightly behind, Matt. So I'll give you a shot here. Start with you. Tell me why the wrap up of the third man is more indelible.

47:58 Well, I'll just spend a second or two on the sewer chase, which in itself, it culminates in great thriller action, especially of its time. it really plays to the cinematography with the light and shadow and the fact that Holly has to make the final decision, especially after the very polite puncher pain is shot by Harry Lyme to finish Harry Lyme off himself. But it is this final shot after the funeral, which Graham Greene, which we haven't even really talked about, you know, the grandfather of spy fiction wrote this movie and, later released as a novel based on his treatment for the film, but it was written first as a treatment in novel form, but not for a release, but then as a screenplay and then as

48:42 a novel, had a happy ending where Holly Martins and Anna end up together. But Carol Reed, and I believe Selznick of all people, if I have that right, liked the ending better of her kind of hewing to her either love or devotion or misguided devotion for Harry Lyme. And then it gives us one of the longest final locked down shots that doesn't involve credits, you know, playing over it, where she is in the far rear of the frame. There's a vanishing point perspective to the centralization like you would see in an old restoration play set.

49:24 It almost doesn't look real. It looks like a backdrop of these great big trees funneling down. And she's coming from that vanishing point to camera as Joseph Cotton's in the foreground waiting for her very casually as if it's a foregone conclusion that she will stop talk to him and she will see all that he's done for her, but she still doesn't. And she walks past him. And then as legend has it, Cotton thought the shot was over, pulls out a cigarette, not as a character, but as an actor and smokes it. And that's in the film as well, because he's just, he's just existing.

49:57 In that moment.

49:58 I never knew that.

49:59 That's what I've read. Who knows if that's true, but taking a moment almost laughing himself at the thought that he could be so foolish as to believe she was going to stop and be with him because Harry Lyme, even after he's dead, has that much charisma and power over her and others to eclipse Joseph Cotton once again.

50:19 He's been had one last time from the grave. And I think that's funny to him. And I think it deserves a smoke. And it's just, it's what seals this movie for me. It takes it, it elevates it from a kind of genre noir thriller to To a great film. And that's why every time I go back, that ending hits.

50:38 Me even harder and harder each time. It's beautiful. I hadn't heard that either, but I certainly thought that was the most credible film smoking I had ever seen.

50:47 But it also has that zither going. Yeah. And the music is part of that.

50:51 Yeah.

50:51 It's a lot of it.

50:52 The Selznick point, it's crazy that Selznick was lobbying for the more dour ending.

50:58 Yeah, because was he the one that also said of the Zither music, like, lose the banjo?

51:01 Was that him? I haven't heard that, but I do. That does sound credible. I mean, the only note that I've heard Bogdanovich and Soderbergh in that commentary track and others kind of site is that apparently Selznick really did not like Ada Valli's wardrobe. He wanted her to be more glamorous and have fancy, you know, I mean, she's supposed to be broke. And Reed and Graham Greene were arguing, they're like, well, no, Harry Lyme is a creep. You know, he's not spending any money on his girlfriend. It just makes her adoration of him all the more misplaced that he treats her so obviously badly. You know, and apparently this is just the kind of thing that by being in Vienna and then in England at Shepperton, you know,

51:40 Reed and Korda and Greene were able to keep the influence of Selznick from Hollywood at a minimum in a way that Wells being in Venice, obviously he did not have that geographic protection. Or from himself.

51:53 Well, that's the Wells question, isn't it? Why did he keep abandoning his editing rooms you know that that is the great question yeah.

52:02 I mean i always thought until i started preparing for this that that wells had kind of walked away from the editing of touch of evil and frustration and it sounds like that that was not the case like maybe.

52:12 He just happened to go out and they took it over while he was away yeah but that's what ended up happening.

52:17 I also realized that when i i tried to set up a contrast between the finales of these two movies i then cited two scenes from the third man and none from touch of evil which uh You know, Touch of Evil, which has the great finale where Menzies, you know, is persuaded to wear a wire and try to get Quinlan, his boss and his idol to implicate himself. Just the irony of that, of, you know, Menzies having to be the one who turns against Quinlan the same way that Holly Martins is eventually persuaded to help Major Calloway capture Lyme at the end of The Third Man. In addition to all that, I love that this is one of those plot points that hangs on a piece of now archaic technology, which is the short range of the bug

53:01 that Menzies is wearing and the fact that Vargas has to stay very close by carrying this toolbox-sized transceiver with a three- or four-foot-long antenna sticking out of it. That starts echoing when he gets the distance not quite right. It's a real, you know, caller, turn down your radio kind of moment.

53:20 But that's not the real ending of the movie.

53:23 No.

53:23 The real ending of the movie is Marlena Dietrich walking along the river, right along the same place, right after. Hank was a great detective, all right.

53:36 And a lousy cop.

53:37 And the DA asks her.

53:39 Is that all you have to say for him?

53:41 And she says, Tana replies, he was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people? That's a great ending.

53:51 That line could have come from Anna's character in The Third Man about Harriet Lime.

53:55 It's incredible. That's why I'm always confused about it. And when I think back on these films, I always think that, as I said earlier, that some of Tana's lines from Touch of Evil, I mistakenly ascribed them to Anna in The Third Man. And I think the specific one that I'm always mixing up with the, you know, he was some kind of a man, what does it matter what you say about, is when Martins asks her if she was in love with Harry Lyme and she says like, oh, how can you know a thing like that afterwards? Which also points out like one of the things that always throws me a little bit about the third man is, although Harry Lyme is not really dead when Martins arrives, he's supposed to be very recently dead, you know? And

54:32 then at that finale that we just discussed where Anna just walks past Martins and keeps on walking so at this point lime has been fake dead for like four or five days and like really dead for for a day or two.

54:44 Well we never see martin shoot him so there could be a fourth man for all yeah.

54:49 Right uh ask paul verhoeven about the the fourth man my other tech limitation in a thriller that i just love this i i love that this genre you know has to evolve as technology involves it 30 years after this, for some reason, the one I always think of is in No Way Out. Have we all seen this? Yeah, it's been a while.

55:09 1987, right?

55:11 So the facts, yes, that it takes half of the running time of the movie for this dot matrix printer to resolve a photograph. That movie could have only existed in a 25 year window. Exactly. That will unmask Kevin Costner as the spy. So he knows it's going to take eight hours or whatever for this printer to reveal him.

55:29 So he's trying to make moves.

55:30 It would be as if you were like remaking No Way Out Today, but the proof had to come through a 3D printer and printing the bust of the head of the traitor.

55:39 Very good. Terrible Washington, D.C. geography in No Way Out, but really, really great movie. Oh, yes. It's famed among locals here for the non-existent Georgetown Metro stop and just like many, many other things. Glorious. I also love geography gaffes in movie. I know it doesn't matter, but this is my father's cause. My dad, who spent his entire career working for the Federal Highway Administration, Department of Transportation, he's obsessed with maps. And to him, geographic accuracy outweighs any aesthetic advantage that any movie can bring. Oh, he must hate speed. I'm not sure. He's probably seen part of speed in segments on TBS. He also grew up in Chicago, so that explains these two linkages. But second

56:23 only to the Blues Brothers. I think The Fugitive is his favorite movie because he's like, you know, every time Tommy Lee Jones is on the radio talking about which direction they're going and what intersection they're approaching, he's like, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. And why can't more movies do that?

56:36 Isn't it funny the narcissism of your current field? Because I think of that when I see podcasting in movie and TV. It's like, this is not at all how podcasting is. And that's just ridiculous that I would pause and think that.

56:48 Let's get into, if this is a game of inches among two films of... Certainly comparable aesthetic merit in terms of performance, in terms of photography, in terms of setting, all these things. Just the fact that The Third Man was more warmly received when it was first released in 1949 than Touch of Evil was nine years later. The fact that I don't think Touch of Evil really got its due until the 90s when it was recut by Walter Murch, according to Wells' wishes. Although Anne has been writing quite eloquently for the shorter 58 version.

57:22 Well, that's true. If you go and look at all the critical response to it, it's sort of like Buster Keaton in a way. There was a long drought and then Raymond Rohauer suddenly released all of these movies onto the scene and all the critics responded and made Buster Keaton a big deal again. And that's sort of what happened with Touch of Evil. When the re-release came out, the critics responded and reviewed it again. And it had a new life and a new purchase. It did not open well. It was on the bottom of a bill.

57:56 It was like a B-movie. You know, Zugsmith, the producer at Universal, not an A-list producer in the first place. So it wasn't well handled and it wasn't treated like a big deal. And it failed. The critics were really tough on it. I was looking at the variety review of it. It was really mean, you know. It was like it was a weird, strange, odd, inexplicable movie. And the revura filmmaking got in the way of storytelling, and the storytelling was impossible to follow and stuff like that.

58:27 So that's what people thought at the time. So it got a revisionist resurgence.

58:33 Yeah.

58:33 I mean, 40 years from now, when we talk about Digger... Ain't gonna happen.

58:39 Just like I refuse to say that Heaven's Gate is a good movie. Not a good movie.

58:45 As someone who so delights in looking into historic bombs, I cannot explain how I have never seen Heaven's Gate. I have not either. Okay. Yeah. Because I have unironically... sincerely, with all of my heart, loved Hudson Hawk since opening night 1991.

59:03 I have too, Chris.

59:05 I love Hudson Hawk.

59:07 We just got shamed by Anne.

59:09 We got defeated.

59:10 Shames.

59:11 I mean, if only for the Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello timing their burglaries by singing songs that they know the exact runtime to swing on a stone.

59:21 I know.

59:21 I know. Look, we're not proud. We're not proud.

59:23 But I was the exact age and demographic for that movie.

59:28 You know, that hit me in the face.

59:30 It all has to do with how old you are when you see him.

59:32 Truly. It really does. I think you really have to be an adolescent or near adolescent in 1991 to think, wow, Bruce Willis is just indescribably cool. And none of this is embarrassing.

59:44 I would argue I was old enough to know better, though, Chris. I think I've got a few years on you. And I mean, I'll take that shame. I think I deserve it. But you are forgiven.

59:53 Okay.

59:53 I guess I can't give Matt 10 bonus points for endorsing Hudson Hawk. I feel like that would be out of line. You should give him demerits. Even in this dirty game. Yeah.

1:00:05 Yeah. I sound like a New England school marm today.

1:00:11 I know. See, I will give Matt an unquantified smile of recognition there because I don't want to be Hank Quinlan or anything. Worse than Hank Quinlan planting evidence, having his faithful pal Menzies plant evidence for him, corrupting others. Well, if I don't win, I'm going to shoot you. All right. So, Matt, is it just the fact that the third man got released the right way the first time? Although evidently there was also a, this was maybe the hand of Selznick.

1:00:45 There was the shorter cut that came out of the United States first. I don't think I've ever seen that one.

1:00:50 I haven't either, and it was pretty much just eliminating Joseph Cotton being an alcoholic. I think they wanted to make him more unequivocally good. But the thing I do love about this movie is the subtlety in the characters, the three-dimensionality, and having Cotton nursing his sorrows throughout the entire movie just feels good.

1:01:10 Yeah, I know. I agree.

1:01:12 A double bill with a Sandman.

1:01:14 I know. I know. You know what? It's crazy. I have a friend. His name is Justin.

1:01:20 He looks and sounds so much like Joseph Cotton that sometimes when I'm with him, I want to serve him a little shot of schnapps or something and put him in a fedora so I can be hanging out with Holly Martins, put the Oklahoma Kid in his hand, make fake copies of his novels.

1:01:37 It's uncanny. It's amazing. And it makes me so happy.

1:01:41 Am I his friend just because of that?

1:01:43 I don't know.

1:01:44 Yeah.

1:01:44 What was the, I think it was Argyle, the Guy Ritchie movie from like two years ago where they actually published a fake novel or something. Or I guess you can't publish a fake novel. I mean, you can, you know, it's a tie-in novel that only exists as a bit of ephemera accompanying this very forgettable movie. You know, but I wish I could read The Lone Rider of Santa Fe.

1:02:02 I know.

1:02:03 Death at XX Ranch. What are some of the other Holly Martins?

1:02:06 The Santa Fe are.

1:02:08 Yeah, I forget.

1:02:08 I want to make some of those fake books and have a bookshelf with them on there.

1:02:14 I know you would do it, Matt. As someone who I own, I think, more than one of Matt's posters of imaginary James Bond theme park attractions that he drew, the stunt spectacular. Yeah. So, all right, guys. Well, you know, for all our talk of the finales here, we haven't really managed to move the needle too much. With respect and gratitude to both advocates on the substance and passion of their scholarship, the court does find that on the basis of the evidence presented here today.

1:02:46 Wait, are you announcing the final? Do we get closing arguments?

1:02:49 Matt, we have time.

1:02:53 Okay.

1:02:54 But I know being the gentleman that you are, you would insist that Ann.

1:02:58 deliver her closing statement. By one point, right?

1:03:01 Yes, yes.

1:03:02 I think that's more like a draw. Good. Matt was an absolutely honorable opponent. Very well done.

1:03:11 And just a more competent barrister or ringside ref or whatever I'm doing here.

1:03:18 Yes.

1:03:18 So, Anne, Touch of Evil, superior to the third man, why?

1:03:23 Touch of Evil is less classical, more innovative. It is more original. It is defining new ways of shooting a movie. It is idiosyncratic in the way that the filmmaker is able to use his tools and apply them to these extraordinarily big characters that he's playing with. It's got a great supporting cast. It has extraordinary cinematography. It has the greatest opening shot in the history of movies. And it has a great performance from the director, Orson Welles, as the villain of the piece. And the supporting cast is led by the great Marlena Dietrich in an unforgettable role that is quoted more often than anything in The Third Man.

1:04:11 You a mess, honey. Anytime I reach for a candy bar for the rest of my life, I'm going to hear Marlena Dietrich telling me to lay off the candy bars. All right. Well said, Anne Thompson.

1:04:22 Matt?

1:04:23 Why is The Third Man, in your view, the superior Wellesian mid-century film noir?

1:04:28 Well, I will cede this point that it does have one of the greatest opening shots in cinema history, but I'm afraid the movie doesn't reach the same heights throughout as where The Third Man ends in one of the greatest shots in cinema history.

1:04:42 Building the entire time toward it.

1:04:45 And for quotable things, you have Orson Welles' speech about how the Italians had war And they created Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci. The Swiss had, what, 500 years of peace and democracy?

1:04:57 What did they create? The cuckoo clock?

1:05:00 I find at the end of the day, A Touch of Evil is a genre film trying to be a little bit more, but The Third Man is a great film dressed in genre's clothing and doesn't tell you what it is until you realize it yourself.

1:05:17 Oh, boy. Okay.

1:05:18 Yeah.

1:05:22 Guys, I'm going to announce for the first time in the brief history of Movie Deathmatch, this is installment 006. So this would be our, God, that makes it the Diamonds Are Forever episode, right, Matt? No, it's Honor Majesty's Secret Service. Oh, Honor Majesty's Secret Service. Yeah, okay. Well, I know you love Diamonds Are Forever, but Honor Majesty's Secret Service, I think, is unequivocally the superior bond of those two.

1:05:46 I agree.

1:05:47 Even though Diamonds Are Forever was directed by Guy Hamilton.

1:05:49 Oh. Oh, wow.

1:05:51 Well, Honor, Majesty, Secret Service is the third man to Diamonds are Forever's A Touch of Evil.

1:05:56 Oh!

1:05:56 There we go. You know, if Matt is pandering to the court, pandering is a strategy that works. So we have our first ever movie deathmatch tie. I have no problem with that. I'm going to throw this to the listeners.

1:06:11 I like winning. I'm competitive, but I think it's a deserving thing.

1:06:15 Yeah, and we're forced to choose sides in a competition that is no losers.

1:06:20 I love A Touch of Evil.

1:06:21 I just purchased it before this podcast, not even knowing I was going to do it.

1:06:26 No, that one shot of Orson Welles standing in the doorway with that half light revealing his face, it's one of the great shots of all time.

1:06:34 Yeah.

1:06:36 Uh, I mean, I do need you to tell me now that you have two, which child is your superior child, Matt? Just, uh, which, which one you like better? Which one do you see achieving higher? It's my cat, Margo. Okay.

1:06:48 No, I'm going to, you know, if you can pull a tie, obviously I can pull a tie.

1:06:52 Okay.

1:06:53 My children are tied.

1:06:54 What am I, a monster? I love them equally.

1:06:56 Yeah.

1:06:57 I think you should, uh, release them from being bound to one another. Well, I'll let the listeners tell me if they want to try to tip the scales of justice. Listeners, it is your turn. Go to moviedeathmatch.com and vote for which of these two mid-century films noir is the greatest, whether you've been persuaded by one of our expert combatants today or whether you had a clear favorite from which you will not be moved. Let us know. Vote now at moviedeathmatch.com. Usually we have to take a moment to mourn the erasure of a great film in single combat, and happily today we... We don't. Anne, we will point our listeners, of course, towards IndieWire, towards the Screen Talk podcast.

1:07:37 You are speaking to us from the New York Film Festival at this moment, are you not?

1:07:42 I am.

1:07:42 Is there anything else you'd like to plug, or have you seen anything there at the festival that you want to promote?

1:07:48 No, I loved a lot of the movies at the New York Film Festival, and some of them disappointed me. Some of them didn't quite measure up to my expectations, but the one that exceeded them was Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love, which will be hitting theaters and probably will end up in the best international feature category at the Oscars.

1:08:10 And the Walter Murch restoration of Hudson Hawk, so that now audiences will understand. Your mouth to God's ears.

1:08:17 Have either of you ever met Walter Murch?

1:08:19 No.

1:08:20 He is very cool. No.

1:08:23 He's one of those people where I've watched so many documentaries with him that I You know, I have a parasocial relationship with him, I think, but no.

1:08:30 He's very cool.

1:08:31 Anyway.

1:08:32 Matt, with Gorlian Rust is a Gorlian must. If anyone asks me, I'm very excited that Super Ego is back. I just bought the complete archive. Oh, that's nice of you. I would have sent that to you. Well, you guys, oh, I could have saved myself $ 100. It's okay. I actually don't even know how to do it with the new platform.

1:08:49 Well worth it. Well worth it. I keep hoping that Conan will bring back Pimpot 5000 or The Masturbating Bear or some probably NBC owns all of those characters. I'm happy enough when Robert Smigel comes on the show or his nemesis, Timothy Oliphant. Anybody that dresses Conan down. What else are you plugging, sir? Oh, actually, you know what?

1:09:13 I just wrote a short story for a great site called deathbedwriting.com. It's all horror comedy short pieces. And I had such a blast doing it and working with them. Rich Duncan helped me with it as an editor. And it's a story called Normal Like Me. about someone that's in the Gourley tradition.

1:09:35 Very normal, I assure you. Well, you are a real Renaissance man, certainly. I know, in addition to all of your other creative modes, you're a musician. Have you ever played a zither? I've never played a zither. I've played one on a keyboard.

1:09:52 I've experimented with that sound, but no, I don't think I've ever even touched a zither.

1:09:57 Yeah, I almost was like, I was trying to think of other... And I was like, is that the instrument that Peter Buck wrote, Losing My Religion? And that was a mandolin. Yeah, that's a mandolin. But there is an REM track called Zither. Okay. On New Adventures in Hi-Fi, I think.

1:10:13 And the score to Dead Poets Society, I believe, is Hammered Dulcimer, which is sort of similar. It's like a zither, but you play with these little mallets.

1:10:22 Matt, you are so kind to do this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, thanks, Chris. I love you. It was a blast.

1:10:29 And it made me really, organize my thoughts on the third man so i'm grateful for that.

1:10:34 Good well i hope we'll we'll talk certainly when there's some more bond news i guess we we have to get uh dune part three out of the way before denis villeneuve can it's coming soon i'm sure get into into action on there god bless you matt gorley i i am certain i would not be doing this if if not for your pioneering work in this field.

1:10:53 That's very kind of you. And I am certain I would not be doing this if not for my own pioneering work.

1:10:58 So, touche.

1:11:00 Good.

1:11:01 Outstanding. Delightful of you to make the time. I know we did not make it easy for you, but you were so kind to do this. Thank you so much.

1:11:11 Thank you for this. It was really fun. I enjoyed myself.

1:11:14 Thank you, guys. Good to see you. You can always email us at deathmatchatfilmspotting.com. Tell us how we can improve our highly flawed scoring system. Suggest a deathmatch you'd like to see. Join us for our next movie deathmatch when two unconventional, not to say dysfunctional, couples work out their issues during the most wonderful time of the year in an unsentimental O-Tour Christmas dust-up. We must thank Filmspotting family member Devin Wambold for our pairing of Stanley Kubrick's final film, 1999's Eyes Wide Shut, against recent Best Director winner Paul Thomas Anderson's 2017 Phantom Thread. The tea is going out.

1:11:53 The showdown is staying right here with me, and I hope with you. Forget Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. It's going to be Tom and Nicole and Daniel and Vicki in our next Movie Deathmatch. Movie Deathmatch is produced by Chris Klemek, who is me, and by Golden Joe DeSou. Without Golden Joe, the show wouldn't go. It is executive produced by Adam Kempinar and Sam Van Hogren. My quest to find rhyming nicknames for them both is ongoing.