Have You Seen ....... ? by David Thomson Part 4 - Adaptation, Belle de Jour and The Third Man

It's Nicholas Cage who plays Charlie Kaufman , the writer/director of this strange movie. So a fictional tortured screenwriter with the same name as him in real life. Enter Meryl Streep, stage left, as Susan Orlean, (the joint  writer of the screenplay), a journalist who has written a book called "The Orchid Thief" about Chris Cooper's John Laroche stage right. In the wings are Tilda Swinton, Cara Seymour and Brian Cox and a whole list of others. Now Charlie has a twin brother Donald and it all gets complicated. In the film, Charlie is struggling to write a screenplay from the book. The action jumps back and forth to when Susan meets John. Enough said, except that the stars look so young in 2002. The director was Spike Jonze  David Thomson explains that this was a late addition to the book: "to be honest, it was the last" after he was pitched the film by two screenwriters. He fell asleep the second time as he did the first. I managed to keep awake. Just.

I was going to avoid Luis Bunuel's 1967 Belle de Jour until I read David Thomson's advice that this was  "one of the very few great films". And it scores 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. So how could I resist. The subject matter maybe sordid but the film is in fact an anti-erotic movie. Catherine Deneuve is  terrific, sophisticated and spectacular in her Yves St Laurent dresses. For me, a strange story told with flashbacks to what looked like a traumatic childhood, maybe the explanation for why she seeks excitement with other men. These are pretty awful characters that visit this high class brothel. One in particular later on turns the movie into more of a thriller. It just goes to show you never know who you might meet. It's not as if she needs the money. Genevieve Page is terrific as the resident madam. The image on the screen has saturated colours with sumptuous interiors and magnificent furnishings and decor. In some ways the film looks dated and in others very modern. An enigma.

The one thing that spoilt this film for me was that I had seen that iconic scene late on so many times, when Orson Welles' Harry Lime finally appears from the shadows. The plot hinges on the fact that he was dead and we watched his burial at the beginning of the film. If we didn't know the story and it's ending, Joseph Cotton's Holly Martin's search for the truth would be far more interesting. What made it for me was the British cast with Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee (didn't "M"  look so young in 1949) and Wilfred Hyde White. I didn't know that post war Vienna was divided into four zones (American, British, French and Soviet Union) and that the central district was collectively administered by the Allied Control Council. This is central to some of the action. Director Carol Reed's location black and white photography of the bombed city was superb, this was a movie never to have colour. It's Alida Valli as Anna Schmidt who tells Holly "You shouldn't get mixed up in this". But we know he will. Surprisingly it does not appear in David Thomson's book despite his positive reviews elsewhere, but I include it on his behalf.