Years and Movies: 1949
According to FilmGourmand, Carol Reed's film-noir "The Third Man" was recognized as the best film of 1949. The film was shot by the British film company London Film Productions by the British film director based on the novel by British writer Graham Green. However, the American Film Institute has put this movie on its list of the top 10 AMERICAN Mystery film. So what?
"The Third Man" received 4 film awards, including the Grand Prix of the Cannes International Film Festival and the BAFTA Award (as the best British film!).
The film was enthusiastically received by film critics. Suffice it to say that Roger Ebert rated it 4 out of 4 stars and included it in his list of "Great Movies". A well-known American film critic James Berardinelli said so about the film in his review: "Many critics consider The Third Man to be the best British post-World War II film noir. There are others (myself included) who believe it to be one of the best-ever examples of film noir to come out of all of Europe. The Third Man has all the right ingredients: an engaging, twisty storyline (written by Graham Greene); one of the most diabolical and charismatic villains ever to grace the screen; crisp, innovative directing (by the underrated Carol Reed); a score (by Anton Karas) that it as unforgettable as it is unconventional; and cinematography (by Robert Krasker) that uses the black-and-white medium to its fullest. Not only is The Third Man a darling of the critics, but it has been embraced with glee by the general populace for more than five decades."
And this assessment of Berardinelli is very fair: more than 70% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users around the world rated this Carol Reed's movie with ratings of 8 or higher.
Based on the aforementioned indicators of the film, its rating, according to FilmGourmand, was 8.963, which allowed the film to take 175th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
In addition to the purely artistic merits of the film "The Third Man" is valuable as a historical document since, according to Roger Ebert, it "was made by men who knew the devastation of Europe at first hand. Carol Reed worked for the British Army's wartime documentary unit, and the screenplay was by Graham Greene, who not only wrote about spies but occasionally acted as one. Reed fought with David O. Selznick, his American producer, over every detail of the movie; Selznick wanted to shoot on sets, use an upbeat score and cast Noel Coward as Harry Lime. His film would have been forgotten in a week. Reed defied convention by shooting entirely on location in Vienna, where mountains of rubble stood next to gaping bomb craters, and the ruins of empire supported a desperate black market economy." The film with documentary authenticity reproduces the real picture of Vienna in 1948-1949: the division into 4 occupation zones, spies and speculators at every turn, etc. etc. In other words, the film "The Third Man" is a clear illustration of life in Central Europe in 1949.
In addition to the film "The Third man" in the top ten films of world cinema of 1949, according to FilmGourmand, included the following movies:
- Banshun 晩春 (Late Spring), by Yasujirô Ozu, Japan. Movie's Rating - 8,234; 450th Rank in the Golden Thousand
- White Heat, by Raoul Walsh, USA. Movie's Rating - 8,052; 646th Rank in the Golden Thousand
- The Heiress, by William Wyler, USA. Movie's Rating - 8,029; 677th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
- Золушка (Cinderella), by Nadezhda Kosheverova and Mikhail Shapiro, USSR. Movie's Rating - 7,972; 745th Rank in the Golden Thousand
- Kind Hearts and Coronets, by Robert Hamer, UK. Movie's Rating - 7,969; 754th Rank in the Golden Thousand
- Nora inu 野良犬 (Stray Dog), by Akira Kurosawa, Japan. Movie's Rating - 7,856; 923rd Rank in the Golden Thousand
- Shizukanaru kettô 静かなる決闘 (The Quiet Duel), by Akira Kurosawa, Japan
- The Set-Up, by Robert Wise, USA
- Riso amaro (Bitter Rice), by Giuseppe De Santis, Italy
10 most "cinegenic"*, in our opinion, events of 1949:
- The birth of NATO. 12 countries, including USA, Canada, Iceland, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, Italy and Portugal signed the North Atlantic Treaty, which became the basis for NATO. The main goal of the created organization is to counteract the spread of Communist influence in Western Europe.
- Chinese Communist victory. The many years lasted civil war in China ended in victory for the communist forces. The power of the Kuomintang has been preserved only on the territory of the island of Taiwan. On the territory of mainland China, the People’s Republic of China was established under the leadership of the Communist Party. USA declared boycott to China .
- Soviet atomic bomb. In the USSR the first atomic bomb tested. Enterprise “Krasnyi Mayak” dropped radioactive waste into the river Techa, whereby the radiation received 124 thousands men.
- The defeat of the communists in Greece. Since at the Yalta conference, Stalin agreed to Churchill's proposal to "exchange Poland for Greece", the USSR stopped supporting Pro-Communist anti-fascist forces in this Balkan country. In this regard, the civil war ended with the victory of monarchical, Pro-British organizations, many of which were tainted by cooperation with the Nazi occupation regime during the war.
- Fight against "rootless cosmpolites". The mass media in the Soviet Union launched a brutal propaganda campaign against the "rootless cosmpolites," which is a euphemism for Soviet Jews, accusing them of being pro-Western and anti-socialist.
- Operation Priboi. Another mass deportation of the population of the Baltic republics has been carried out in the USSR. 92,000 people were deported to remoted and deserted areas of the USSR.
- Forrestal's suicide. United States Secretary of Defense James Forrestal resigned suddenly. In two months in a fit of paranoia he committed suicide. Before death several days he repeated: ”The Russians are coming. The Russians are coming. They’re right around. I’ve seen Russian soldiers!”
- "Witch hunt" in the USA. In the USA the trial of the Communist Party leaders started.
- Murder of Aurora Quezon. Five years after the death of Philippine President Manuel Luis Quezon, his widow, Aurora Quezon, and their daughter were killed while driving to open a hospital dedicated to the late president. Suspicions of the murder were brought against the Hukbalahap organization, an armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, strongly influenced by the Chinese Maoists.
Besides Pedro Almodóvar, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, Eva Shikulska were born.
* -With "cinematic" in the present context, we mean events that either have already found their reflection in world cinema, or deserve to become the basis of the plot of a future film.