No link to free movies this time -- just some thoughts on Carol Reed's 1949 film The Third Man, which starred Orson Welles in his pre-corpulent yet explosively hammy days.
God, what a ham that guy was!
Welles doesn't even appear in the film until about the one-hour mark, which is a nice break from convention. When he finally shows up, it's an interesting reveal, and the look on his face is vintage Welles.
But holy crap, what a ham.
People knock William Shatner for overacting. No, no, no. You don't understand overacting until you've seen Welles do it. He's old school, a stage actor in an era when stage actors were still learning the nuances of acting for film. Orson Welles makes screen dialogue his bitch, and then he has a sandwich. I can forgive Welles for some of his hamitude. He is, after all, Unicron. I'm paraphrasing something I read in Entertainment Weekly when I say this:
Orson Welles' last film role was voicing a being who ate entire planets. Baby, that's hilarious.
He also reminds me a lot of my friend Michael -- also an actor. I'm talking about early day, worker's theatre guy, not the corpulent, wine-schilling, easy-to-confuse-with-Raymond-Burr Welles.
See for yourself. Orson Welles:
Raymond Burr:
All joshing aside, The Third Man was pretty solid, but not stocked with household names. If you can find the Criterion DVD, check it out. It's out of print, so tell me where you saw it and maybe I'll get a deal on it.
1 comments:
Have you seen Peter Jackson's "Heavenly Creatures?" There's a scene where a "Third Man" era Welles lookalike is chasing two girls around a city.
It's intense.
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