All Else Confusion

Today TCM is featuring one of my favorite actors - Joseph Cotten. Good-looking, charming, with a quiet sophistication that allowed him to play roles in almost every genre, he was in parts a character actor, leading man, romantic hero and even the occasional bad guy. In a career spanning 40 years, he appeared in a remarkable number of films that received high aclaim: Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Gaslight, The Third Man, Shadow of a Doubt, Niagara, Portrait of Jennie, Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, and The Farmer's Daughter just to name a few. He was quoted as saying, "Orson Welles lists Citizen Kane (1941) as his best film, Alfred Hitchcock opts for Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Sir Carol Reed chose The Third Man (1949) - and I'm in all of them."

My favorites include, The Farmer's Daughter, Since You Went Away, Gaslight, The Third Man, I'll Be Seeing You. Only The Third Man is playing today, so that's my pick of the day.

Holly Martins arrives in Vienna to find that his friend Harry Lime was killed in mysterious circumstances. As Holly investigates Harry's death, he finds that Harry wasn't all he seemed to be. With Cotten, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard, written by Graham Greene, this classic Film Noir thriller is number 57 on the AFI Top 100 movies of all time list and tops the British Movie Institute list of the 100 best British films.

Labels: movies