It begins with a funeral and ends with a funeral. The two in-car viewpoint shots from the same angle lead to two different roads. The first sight is full of yearning for a marriage, but the latter one has become a stranger. The long shot of the desolate street, the male protagonist leaning on the left foreground, and the female protagonist walking from a distance, silently walking out of the frame in the cold wind, deserves to be the most rebellious (film history) and poetic ending in film history.
The Unforgettable Dead, Orson Welles' third man, also captivated audiences with his charisma, even though we all know how heinous he was. Post-war Vienna can be seen as a microcosm of Europe, with divisions of power and unrest, as unbalanced as a heavily used oblique lens. Black market merchants take desperate risks, and Harry is undoubtedly the most courageous and the worst. The male protagonist's visit and investigation led us into the mystery of the third person. Just when the existing clues were exhausted, his appearance brought a beam of light, which completely changed the direction of the plot. The suspected killer becomes an accomplice, and the victim becomes the mastermind. How did the writers and directors draw him out here? We don't know the whole story, only the performance of the camera. First, the relationship between the cat and Harry was mentioned inadvertently, and then an episode outside the window was shown with a moving camera, and then it seemed to be forgotten and returned to the conversation in the house, until the male protagonist finally left, this time it was the cat again, revealing whereabouts of the third person. Darkness, silence, and light and noise quietly confronted, followed by a beam of light, which was caused by the noise of the male protagonist, and disappeared due to the stunned speech of the male protagonist. On the way for the third person to escape, his shadow seemed to be The spotlight was cast on the wall and finally disappeared.
The male protagonist is just, weak, repeatedly indecisive and persuaded, as opposed to Harry's wickedness, but just like that, when he made his final decision, he forever lost the possibility of this trip to Europe. The most precious harvest. The film encapsulates this complex phenomenon and emotion with an imperfect, disappointing ending, perhaps because it represents post-war Europe, or perhaps just because of the film's sophisticated cinematography, which earned it Cannes's gold-brown-green Jackpot. The ruins on the ground, the Ferris wheel in the sky, the sewers underground, this movie goes to the ground, but it can't solve this moral dilemma. The extreme use of black and white light and shadow, the formalist composition and photography, full of expressionist style elements, and the scene scheduling of the sewer chase make up for some of the film's shortcomings in the plot. This is a special noir film.
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