And that AWFUL zither music!! This film must win the Golden Raspberry for worst soundtrack of all time!

If you are an Orson Welles fan, like myself, stay away from this film. Pretend it never existed. It is not a film noir except in the most amateurish sense. You want to see a great Orson Welles film noir? A Touch of Evil is the film for you. Trust me, you’ll never look at Charlton Heston the same way.
Rating: 1 / 5

Heralded as a masterpiece, the only thing masterful about this movie is it does a good job of expressing the point of view of persons who think other persons who are moral, normal and physically plain make for a dreary world, while persons who are physically attractive, street-smart, daring, and often, morally compromised, make the world interesting, and life worth living.

Jesus Christ said that if we don’t hate our lives, and this world, than we can have no part with Him. People who reject Christ’s words look for ways to make life worthwhile, and many of them settle for all-that-glitters, mistaking it for gold.

The “masterly” technique used here is simple – the protagonist is played by Joseph Cotton, an actor deliberately chosen for his mild manner and less than striking appearance. Errol Flynn or Humphrey Bogart he is not. Cotton cannot light up the screen because he is not supposed to. Moreover, he arrives in Vienna almost broke; a failed third-rate novelist – the guy is hapless. Cotton is supposed to represent the inoffensive but also unexciting normal American man of his day, with predictable responses and a WASP moral code. However, the viewer is not supposed to be conscious of what Cotton represents, at least not early on in the film. Almost never is the chief protagonist in any story a weak character, so even though Cotton’s character, Holly, starts off weak, the audience is expecting big things from him.

He meets a woman who may have known his friend, Harry; Harry who was supposed to host him in Vienna, Austria but has been killed in an accident. The woman, though attractive, is portrayed as nothing special at first. However, as the story develops the screenwriter subtly shapes the woman into someone very attractive to male and female viewers, owing to her vulnerability, her desire to avoid repatriation to communist Russia, and other devices that make her irresistible. As she grows more striking, hapless Holly begins to look more and more the rube.

Eventually Harry, played by Orson Wells, is introduced to the audience. The audience, now panting for a male protagonist worthy of the fascinating female is refreshed with a long cool drink when Wells lights up the screen. Problem is, Harry, Well’s character, is a deeply morally-compromised person. He has the blood of hundreds, perhaps even thousands of innocent people, including small children, on his hands. He is also the woman’s former lover. Though the woman is in Vienna illegally, and obviously has loose sexual mores, and though Harry is, in effect, a mass murderer, the script is written in such as way that we are supposed to admire the woman and Harry. Of course, try as he might to be someone special, we come to view the straight arrow, plain-man Holly as just perennially one step behind; simply not as “with it”; not as hip, not as daring, and certainly not a potentially interesting sexual partner. Harry, on the other hand, may be responsible for the death of infants, but doggonit, he is fascinating, and wouldn’t he be exciting to have sex with him…that’s how were supposed to react.

In many ways this film is sick and twisted. And for you bored-with-life hip, lefties out there who are awed by this movie, I just want you to know that I am proud to be a plain-vanilla, boring, morally straight guy; the kind that responds when you need a policeman or firefighter; the kind who won’t stab you in the back or steal your girl when your not looking. As I pass by outside the bar you frequent I’ll see you, Mr. or Ms. Hipster, pretending you’re in the fast lane as you sit on the bar seat in the smoke-filled bar, slyly trying to hook-up with a twenty-something member of the opposite sex, packing a hidden STD. Bon Voyage!

Rating: 2 / 5