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Hi everyone,

This is my first time using Letterboxd and I thought a good film to start with would be a movie I just experienced for the first time. The film is Carol Reed's 1949 masterpiece, "The Third Man". While I know a million articles have been written on the film, I just thought I'd take you through my experience with such a historic piece of cinema.

Growing up, you always hear of certain necessary classics you must see to feel included in film discussions; films such as "The Godfather", "Casablanca", "Vertigo", "The Maltese Falcon", "Gone With The Wind", "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington", "Citizen Kane", etc. And yes, I've seen all of those titles, multiple times. I've also found, as I get older, that films clearly play differently with whatever life I've lived up until that point.

Take "Vertigo" for example, which I rewatched a week or so ago. Seeing that film through my 36-year-old eyes was a much different experience than the film I saw when I was in college. I had always been obsessed with the "Vertigo" shot (dolly zoom) but I hadn't really focused on the other incredible aspects of Hitchcock's filmmaking. I'll do a specific "Vertigo" Letterboxd post at a later date.

ittedly, "The Third Man" wasn't a film that was high up on my radar. I knew the film existed and I knew filmmakers like Martin Scorsese were impacted heavily by the filmmaking Carol Reed displayed.

With that being said, I want to address something that I've always found fascinating about the classic films people may or may not have seen. You always hear things like, "Wait a second! You've never seen "insert title of a classic film'. I feel that instead of making people feel weird or bad about not seeing a classic, more people should embrace that opportunity to educate someone on films that changed the course of cinema history. That's what happened in my case.

My job revolves around watching films and interviewing actors, filmmakers, producers and more. One Sunday morning, I decided that I would watch Christopher Nolan's "Following" for the first time. As we gear up for "Tenet", I wanted to visit Nolan's first feature film. That lead me down a path of trying to interview the lead star of "Following", Jeremy Theobald. During my conversation with Theobald, I asked which films impacted him the most and he mentioned "The Third Man". That mention then lead to me calling a college best friend of mine, who also said I needed to see "The Third Man" and that the final shot will seem very familiar to me once I experience it.

Watching a film from 1949 comes with very interesting expectations. One thing I've always found interesting is the phrase, "it was great for it's time". My issue with a sentence like that is the film is automatically put in a safe box where it can't be criticized by certain people. I believe that is a wrong way to approach classic films as I find the best classic films are timeless. "The Third Man", like "Vertigo", is one of those films that plays extremely well sixty years later.

Every aspect of this film felt oddly fresh, innovative and unique. It's a film that opens with a strange narration from director Carol Reed and that incredibly strange yet beautiful score on the zither. The film immediately had a tone I hadn't experienced quite like that before. I was expecting a rather straight forward "whodunnit" thriller. What I experienced was so much more.

Joseph Cotton's performance is legendary. (I'm still writing this so forgive any grammtical errors at the moment. I just started writing it while I was working and I'll come back to it later on). - Kevin