Movie Death Match: "The Third Man" v. "Touch of Evil"

Our Noir-vember Death Match is a smackdown between two of my personal favorites, both monochromatic midcentury masterpieces featuring great heel turns from Orson Welles. In 1949’s The Third Man, written by Graham Greene and directed by Carol Reed, he was merely the actor who played Harry Lime. He rewrote and directed 1958’s Touch of Evil after star Charlton Heston asked Universal Pictures to invite Welles to assume these chief creative roles, after Welles had already been cast as crooked cop Hank Quinlan.

I’m especially delighted to welcome my pal Matt Gourley, representing The Third Man, to the Death Match cage-or-is-it-a-courtoom, for our third pod collaboration. I was on an episode of James Bonding with him, Matt Mira, and Mark McConville recorded at his home in 2017, and six years later he joined Glen Weldon and me to dissect the forgotten Patrick McGoohan-starring thriller Ice Station Zebra on A Degree Absolute! I’d not met Indiewire’s Anne Thompson, our Touch of Evil stan, prior to this recording, but she was a sharp and savvy delight. Check out the episode below.

The Prince of Wails: Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2, reviewed.

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Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Edward Gero in Henry IV, Part 1.

That's Edward Gero as King Henry IV. I found out only the other day he was in Die Hard 2: Die Harder, a film I loved in 1990 but which has not aged as well as Die Hard or even Die Hard with a Vengeance. I probably didn't talk about him enough in my tangled but enthusiastic Washington City Paper review of both parts of the Shakespeare Theatre's Company's new, Michael Kahn-directed repertory of Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2.

The Chimes at Midnight, Orson Welles' 1965 compression of the Henriad, which I probably spent too much real estate on in the review, is officially, criminally out-of-print, but you can watch it in its entirety for the time being on YouTube. Do.