Deep Thoughts

I watched the post-war noir The Third Man, the film with the famous Orson Wells Cuckoo Clock Speech:

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

Anyway, I think you could write an essay about how The Third Man is the anti-Casablanca, with Wells as the anti-Bogart, Alida Valli as the anti-Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotton playing the anti-Victor Lazlo, and the Major Calloway character as the anti-Captain Louis Renault. If Casablanca is romantic and idealistic, The Third Man is broken and cynical. Which makes sense since Graham Greene wrote the story. They should shown them back to back. Also, Ebert is quoted in that wikipedia article about how appropriate the Zyther soundtrack sounds. It doesn't, and often jarringly so.