Otto
Penzler (seen in the below photo) is the president and CEO of
MysteriousPress.com, the owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City and
the editor of many anthologies of crime stories.
As a noted authority on crime, espionage, suspense and mystery stories, Otto Penzler has been ranking, analyzes and
celebrating the 106 Greatest Crime Films of All-Time for CrimeReads.com.
He
has selected The Third Man as the greatest crime film of all-time.
I’d
have a hard time picking just one film as the greatest all-time crime film, but The
Third Man would most certainly be in my list of top ten crime films.
The 1949 film, directed by Carol
Reed and written by the great thriller writer Graham Greene, is a classic film
and one of
my favorite crime films.
Harry Lime, portrayed
By Orson Welles in The Third Man, is a great, evil character. Lime
is a post-World War II black marketer who masterminds a plot to sell diluted
penicillin to hospitals, which contributes to the death of many children.
Lime is unseen and
only talked about for roughly half of the film and when he is finally
introduced, we see only Lime’s face in the shadows, briefly lit in a dark alley
in Vienna. Lime is seen quickly in profile, with a wry, smug and self-satisfied
look on his face.
He is, as one reviewer
called him, "a charming monster."
When Lime confronts
his old friend, writer Holly Martins, played by Joseph Cotton, Lime excuses his
actions in a now famous speech (written by Welles, not Greene).
In Italy, for thirty
years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed - but
they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance," Lime
explained. "In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of
democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
The film, made richer
by the black and white film noir style and the Anton Karas zither music, is
truly unforgettable.
You can read Otto
Penzler’s piece on The Third Man via the below link:
You can also read my
On Crime column on Otto Penzler in the Washington Times via the below link:
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