Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

THE THIRD MAN (1949)  Presented by ALEXANDER KORDA and DAVID O. SELZNICK. Produced & Directed by CAROL REED. Screenplay by GRAHAM GREENE. Associate Producer: HUGH PERCEVAL. Assistant Director: GUY HAMILTON. Unit Production Manager: T. S. LYNDON-HAYNES. Lighting Cameraman: ROBERT KRASKER. Art Director: VINCENT KORDA. Zither Music arranged and played by ANTON KARAS. Film Editor: OSWALD HAFENRICHTER. Make-up: GEORGE FROST. Wardrobe Supervisor: IVY BAKER. Second Unit Photography: JOHN WILCOX and STAN PAVEY. Set Dresser: DARIO SIMONI. Camera Operators: EDWARD SCAIFE and DENYS COOP. Austrian Advisor: ELIZABETH MONTAGU. Sound Supervisor: JOHN COX. Sound Editor: JACK DRAKE.  

CAST: Joseph Cotten (Holly Martins); Alida Valli (Anna Schmidt); Orson Welles (Harry Lime); Trevor Howard (Major Galloway); Bernard Lee (Sgt. Paine); Ernst Deutsch (Baron Kurtz); Erich Ponto (Dr. Winkel); Siegfried Breuer (Popesco); Wilfrid Hyde-White (Crabbin); Paul Hoerbiger (Porter); Annie Rosar (Porter’s wife); Hedwig Bleibtreu (Anna's Landlady); Frederick Schreicker (Hansl's Father); Herbert Halbik (Hansl); Jenny Werner (Winkel's Maid); Nelly Arno (Kurtz' Mother); Alexis Chesnakov (Col. Brodsky); Leo Bieber (Barman at the Casanova); Geoffrey Keen (British MP); Otto Schusser (Stand-in for Orson Welles). 

The superb new Criterion edition of The Third Man, to quote from their press release, features a “luminous new transfer of the film, with digitally restored image and sound.” And, indeed, this transfer is an absolute joy, sparkling like diamonds, which assistant director Guy Hamilton might quip, “are forever.”  It certainly surpasses all previous versions of the film that have been available.  A note from Martin Bigham, which follows the Carol Reed interview, below, explains why: The original nitrate negative was found at Pinewood studios and used to make new prints in 1996, at London’s Soho laboratories, who are specialists in the lost art of black and white printing.

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Jonathan Rosenbaum’s new book, Discovering Orson Welles arrived in stores earlier this month, via the UC Press, and is highly recommended. Here is the table of contents:

1. I Missed It at the Movies: Objections to "Raising KANE"
2. The Voice and the Eye: A Commentary on the HEART OF DARKNESS Script
3. Notes on a Conversation with Welles
4. First Impressions of F FOR FAKE
5. The Butterfly and the Whale: Orson Welles's F FOR FAKE
6. Prime Cut (The 107-Minute TOUCH OF EVIL)
7. André Bazin and the Politics of Sound in TOUCH OF EVIL
8. The Invisible Orson Welles: A First Inventory
9. Review of Biographies by Barbara Leaming and Charles Higham and a Critical Edition of TOUCH OF EVIL
10. Afterword to THE BIG BRASS RING, a Screenplay by Orson Welles (with Oja Kodar)
11. Wellesian: Quixote in a Trashcan (New York University Welles Conference)
12. Reviews of Citizen Welles and a Critical Edition of CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT
13. Review of Orson Welles: A Bio-Bibliography
14. Orson Welles's Essay Films and Documentary Fictions: A Two-Part Speculation
15. The Seven ARKADINs
16. OTHELLO Goes Hollywood
17. Truth and Consequence: On IT'S ALL TRUE: BASED ON AN UNFINISHED FILM BY ORSON WELLES
18. Afterword to THE CRADLE WILL ROCK, an Original Screenplay by Orson Welles
19. Orson Welles in the U.S.: An Exchange with Bill Krohn
20. The Battle over Orson Welles
21. TOUCH OF EVIL Retouched
22. Excerpt from "Problems of Access: On the Trail of Some Festival Films and Filmmakers" (On TOUCH OF EVIL)
23. Welles in the Lime Light: THE THIRD MAN
24. Orson Welles as Ideological Challenge
25. Orson Welles's Purloined Letter: F FOR FAKE
26. When Will--and How Can--We Finish Orson Welles's DON QUIXOTE?

Appendix: The Present State of the Welles Film Legacy

Index

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Wellesnet’s interview with Jonathan Rosenbaum can be read here:

www.wellesnet.com/rosenbaum_interview.htm

PRINCE OF FOXES (1949) Twentieth Century-Fox.

Directed by Henry King; Produced by Sol C. Siegel; Screenplay by Milton Krims; Second Unit Director: Robert D. Webb; Based on the novel by Samuel Shellabarger; Director of Photography: Leon Shamroy; Editor: Barbara McLean; Art Direction: Lyle Wheeler and Mark-Lee Kirk. Costume designer: Vittorio Nino Novarese; Music by Alfred Newman. Special Photographic Effects: Fred Sersen. Sound: Roger Heman. 107 min. 

The Cast: Tyrone Power (Anrea Orsini), Orson Welles (Cesare Borgia), Wanda Hendrix (Camilla Verano), Felix Aylmer (Count Antonio Verano), Everett Sloane (Mario Belli), Katina Paxinou (Mona Constanza Zoppo), Marina Berti (Angela), Leslie Bradley (Don Esteban), Eduardo Ciannelli (Art dealer) James Carney (Alphonso D’Este). 

By Lawrence French 

In honor of Orson Welles' 92nd birthday earlier this month, Fox Home Video has released three of Welles early fims as actor on DVD.  Given the amount of work Welles did for Fox, perhaps we will eventually see a complete box set of Orson Welles' Fox films.  Since Welles delivered the oration at Darryl Zanuck’s funeral, which presumably was filmed, that might be a great supplement to include on any future Fox-Zanuck-Welles releases. The three current Fox titles featuring Welles are Jane Eyre, The Black Rose and Prince of Foxes. 

Firstly, Fox is to be congratulated for not only providing DVD’s that are beautifully restored, but also come at an agreeably low price and are handsomely packaged, with slip case covers and include a set of four miniature lobby cards showing scenes from the film.  Also, as noted on the message board, some of the great scores done by Bernard Herrmann (on Jane Eyre) and Alfred Newman (on Foxes) are available as isolated tracks.  

On re-viewing Prince of Foxes, I was quite pleasantly surprised, since I had almost no memory of it from a screening caught nearly 30 years ago at a Henry King retrospective held at the Museum of Modern Art.  But in Fox's luminous new transfer, you can now enjoy the film for all it’s purely fun aspects, including Welles gleeful performance as the scheming Cesare Borgia, along with Everett Sloane providing much delight as a double-crossing sidekick, who sadistically offers a Lear-like moment at the Borgia court, by gouging out Tyrone Power's eyes and then squishing them like grapes. It's literally eye-popping! 

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We appear to be back. I sincerely hope that's the case, anyway. I never assume switching web hosts is going to be so traumatic and torturous, but this time took the cake, largely because of the mystical nature of Wordpress, the software we use here for the news blog. The instructions for moving it sound simple. It should be easy, you think, as you move the files over. You make the necessary changes and fire it up. And you get...a blank page. So you go back and re-install all this crap. And the same thing happens. So you go on Wordpress's support forum, and get some no doubt well-meaning but utterly useless advice, which seems to be the usual for when I try to get help there. Lesson: Wordpress support = useless.

So. I delete everything again, and try again. Still nothing. After trying something else yet again, and I finally just try something for the hell of it. And it works. But it isn't installed in the home directory, so I have to move it, which involves more gut-churning excitement. But, lo and behold, that works as well. And that brings us up to a couple minutes ago, when I started writing this while the blog is working, as one never knows when this thing will crap out again. IF it does crap out. Who knows at this point? If you look below, you'll see that apostrophes and other things have replaced with question marks. I don't know why that happened, but I'm working on it.

One of the other aspects of this move was my intention to upgrade to another message board system, and that went absolutely problem-free. That was the bit that I thought would go haywire, if something did so. And no problems at all, yet. The URL for the message board has changed however. It is now HERE You should be able to log right in with your normal password, and all avatars and such should be working. Personal messages appear to have been lost, so apologies there if you had something you wanted to keep. If you have a problem logging in or forgot your password, let me know. Oh, and yes, the last couple weeks of posts are lost, due to data problems. But what's two weeks versus the prior six years, right?

Jeff W.