According to an article at cnn.com, the version played on TCM is a shortened version of the original. The original is scheduled to be released on dvd with the Third Man in France next month.
http://www.cnn.com/2005....ex.html
Shadowing The Third Man
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Harvey Chartrand
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Shadowing The Third Man
When the Italian composer and jazz musician Piero Piccioni was accused of murdering starlet Wilma Montesi, his close friend Alida Valli gave him an alibi for the day the 20-year-old girl was presumed to have died in April 1954, saying he had been with her at the home of the film producer Carlo Ponti. Montesi's body was found lying dead on a beach near Rome.
Piccioni was the son of Italian foreign minister Attilio Piccioni, a leading Christian Democrat politician. Gossip about Piero Piccioni's involvement in the girl's mysterious death surfaced in a tabloid, and, before long, shady figures of the emerging Roman dolce vita were also implicated in Montesi's apparent drowning.
Piccioni and his friends were accused of having drugged the girl at an orgy in a beach villa. They were acquitted of murder in 1957 and the Montesi case is still unsolved.
Alida Valli, her name dragged through the mud in this protracted sex-drugs-murder scandal, stuck to her alibi story and had to rebuild her acting career from scratch. There is a three-year gap in her filmography after Visconti's classic historical romance SENSO (1954), in which she is at the peak of her beauty. By the time Valli returned to the screen in Pontecorvo's THE WIDE BLUE ROAD in 1957, she was a bit older and matronly in appearance. From then on, it was character parts for Valli. She worked steadily until quite recently, in classics such as Antonioni's IL GRIDO, Franju's LES YEUX SANS VISAGE, Pasolini's EDIPO RE and Argento's SUSPIRIA. She is now 84 and presumably retired.
Piccioni was the son of Italian foreign minister Attilio Piccioni, a leading Christian Democrat politician. Gossip about Piero Piccioni's involvement in the girl's mysterious death surfaced in a tabloid, and, before long, shady figures of the emerging Roman dolce vita were also implicated in Montesi's apparent drowning.
Piccioni and his friends were accused of having drugged the girl at an orgy in a beach villa. They were acquitted of murder in 1957 and the Montesi case is still unsolved.
Alida Valli, her name dragged through the mud in this protracted sex-drugs-murder scandal, stuck to her alibi story and had to rebuild her acting career from scratch. There is a three-year gap in her filmography after Visconti's classic historical romance SENSO (1954), in which she is at the peak of her beauty. By the time Valli returned to the screen in Pontecorvo's THE WIDE BLUE ROAD in 1957, she was a bit older and matronly in appearance. From then on, it was character parts for Valli. She worked steadily until quite recently, in classics such as Antonioni's IL GRIDO, Franju's LES YEUX SANS VISAGE, Pasolini's EDIPO RE and Argento's SUSPIRIA. She is now 84 and presumably retired.
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Glenn Anders
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Shadowing The Third Man
Shades of MR. ARKADIN!
I had known there was a scandal involving Valli. I thought it involved drugs, but I had forgotten or never known the details.
The murder of Montesi reminds me of Milly's end in MR. ARKADIN.
And the general situation is rather like the "real one" in THE THIRD MAN.
Thank you, Harvey.
Glenn
I had known there was a scandal involving Valli. I thought it involved drugs, but I had forgotten or never known the details.
The murder of Montesi reminds me of Milly's end in MR. ARKADIN.
And the general situation is rather like the "real one" in THE THIRD MAN.
Thank you, Harvey.
Glenn
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