This was one of my late father’s favorite movies, if not his absolute favorite. It is a criminally underrated and underappreciated film. DARK CITY, Watch it.
The ever-famous Ferris Wheel scene from my personal favorite movie, The Third Man. Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles in their prime. While Orson Welles did not direct the movie, it was always rumored he insisted on direct control of everything in this scene, especially the dialogue. I’ve attached the script lines in regular text after the video. Enjoy. “The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly.”
HARRY Hello, old man. How are you?
MARTINS Hello, Harry.
HARRY Well, well, they seem to’ve been giving you quite some busy time.
MARTINS Listen…
HARRY Yes.
MARTINS I want to talk to you.
HARRY Talk to me?…Of course…Come on…
(They move towards the big wheel. The girl attendant of the wheel enters)
HARRY Kids used to ride this thing a lot in the old days. They haven’t got the money nowadays, poor little devils.
(Harry gets the tickets from the girl.)
GIRL Zwei steck.
HARRY Geht in ordung. (They enter the carriage of the wheel.)
GIRL Vielen danke.
(Girl attendant closes the door and starts the wheel in motion.)
MARTINS Listen, Harry – I didn’t believe that…
HARRY It’s good to see you, Holly.
MARTINS I was at your funeral.
HARRY It was pretty smart, wasn’t it? Oh, the same old indigestion.
(takes a tablet)
Holly…these are the only things that help – these tablets. These are the last. Can’t get them anywhere in Europe any more.
MARTINS Do you know what’s happened to your girl?
HARRY Hmm.
MARTINS She’s been arrested.
HARRY Tough…tough…Don’t worry, old man, they won’t hurt her.
MARTINS They are handing her over to the Russians.
HARRY What can I do, old man, I’m dead, aren’t I?
MARTINS You can help her.
HARRY Holly…
(Harry looks out of the window, then at Martins)
HARRY …exactly who did you tell about me? Hmm?
MARTINS I told the police.
(Harry looks out of the window.)
HARRY Unwise, Holly…
MARTINS And – Anna…
HARRY Did the police believe you?
MARTINS You don’t care anything at all about Anna, do you?
(He laughs.)
HARRY Well, I’ve got quite a lot on my mind.
MARTINS You wouldn’t do anything.
(Harry looks at Martins.)
HARRY What do you want me to do?
MARTINS (overlap) You can get somebody else…
HARRY Do you expect me to give myself up?
MARTINS Why not?
HARRY It’s far better thing that I do… Holly, you and I aren’t heroes, the world doesn’t make any heroes…
MARTINS You’ve got plenty of contacts.
HARRY Outside of your stories…I’ve got to be careful. I’m only safe in the Russian Zone… I’m safe as long as they can use me…
MARTINS As long as they can use you?
HARRY I wish I could get rid of this thing.
MARTINS Oh, so that’s how they found out about Anna… You told them, didn’t you?
HARRY Don’t try to be a policeman, old man.
MARTINS What did you expect me to be – part of your…
HARRY Part? You can have any part you want, so long as you don’t interfere…I have never cut you out of anything yet.
MARTINS I remember when they raided the gambling joint – you knew a safe way out…
HARRY Sure…
MARTINS Yes, safe for you…not safe for me.
HARRY Old man – you never should have gone to the police. You know you ought to leave this thing alone.
MARTINS Have you ever seen any of your victims?
HARRY Do you know, I don’t ever feel comfortable on these sort of things…Victims?
(He opens the door of the carriage.)
Don’t be melodramatic. Look down there…
(Long shot from Martins’ eye line of the fairground far below and the people now on it.)
Would you feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you £20,000 for every dot that stopped – would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money? Or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man……free of income tax. It’s the only way to save money nowadays.
MARTINS Lot of good your money will do you in jail.
HARRY That jail is in another zone… There’s no proof against me, beside you.
HARRY I carry a gun…I don’t think they’d look for a bullet wound after you’d hit that ground…
MARTINS They dug up your coffin.
HARRY And found Harbin? Hmm, pity. Oh, Holly, what fools we are, talking to each other this way… As though I would do anything to – or you to me.
(Harry closes the door of the carriage.)
You’re just a little mixed up about things…in general. Nobody thinks in terms…of human beings. Governments don’t, so why should we? They talk about the people, and the Proletariat… I talk about the suckers and the mugs… It’s the same thing. They have their five-year plan, and so have I.
MARTINS You used to believe in God.
HARRY I still do believe in God, old man… I believe in God and Mercy and all that… The dead are happier dead. They don’t miss much here…
(Harry starts to idly write on the window at his side – he has drawn on the steamed-up window a heart with an arrow through it. He is writing the word ANNA above it.)
…poor devils.
What do you believe in?
(We see they are now on ground level, through the window.)
Well, if you ever get Anna out of mess, be kind to her.
(He opens the door and Martins starts to go through.)
You’ll find she’s worth it.
(Martins comes out of the carriage of the big wheel, followed by Harry. They stop just outside)
I wish I had asked you to bring me some of these tablets from home… Holly, I would like to cut you in, old man. Nobody left in Vienna I can really trust – and we have always done everything together. When you make up your mind, send me a message… I’ll meet you any place, any time. And when we do meet, old man, it is you I want to see, not the police. Remember that, won’t you?
(Martins moves away but Harry bars his way on the steps. Music starts.)
HARRY Don’t be so gloomy…After all, it’s not that awful. Remember what the fellow said…in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo – Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Renaissance…In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce?…The cuckoo clock.
Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” At the moment the gate to the law stands open, as always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side, so the man bends over in order to see through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices that, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so much, try it in spite of my prohibition. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly gatekeeper. But from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the other. I can’t endure even one glimpse of the third.” The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in, and he wears the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his homeland and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything.” During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost continuously. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this one seems to him the only obstacle for entry into the law. He curses the unlucky circumstance, in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud, later, as he grows old, he still mumbles to himself. He becomes childish and, since in the long years studying the gatekeeper he has come to know the fleas in his fur collar, he even asks the fleas to help him persuade the gatekeeper. Finally his eyesight grows weak, and he does not know whether things are really darker around him or whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the darkness an illumination which breaks inextinguishably out of the gateway to the law. Now he no longer has much time to live. Before his death he gathers in his head all his experiences of the entire time up into one question which he has not yet put to the gatekeeper. He waves to him, since he can no longer lift up his stiffening body.
The gatekeeper has to bend way down to him, for the great difference has changed things to the disadvantage of the man. “What do you still want to know, then?” asks the gatekeeper. “You are insatiable.” “Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”
This is my favorite poem and arguably better than “The Wasteland”.
BY T. S. ELIOT
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question … Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair — (They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”) My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin — (They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”) Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …
I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep … tired … or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it towards some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— If one, settling a pillow by her head Should say: “That is not what I meant at all; That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.”
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
My father and I shared a great love for MY FAIR LADY. It’s based on “Pygmalion” by George Bernard Shaw but Shaw was a jackass and MY FAIR LADY is much better. Plus, Audrey Hepburn is beautiful and I love Rex Harrison. Yes, you can be heterosexual and like musicals, it is indeed possible.
It is causing me an enormous amount of pain to post this, but it should go on the record somewhere (tears in the rain…) that this was their song. Now pardon me while I go puke again.
One more for my dad. Because I wasn’t there at the end for him. I have to live with that. I had to be selfish. I was homeless. I had no choice. I wasn’t there at the end for my mother, either. Such is the irony of life; I spent decades trying to help them and impress them and then, at the end…I wasn’t there. Or was I? Was I on the screen instead of Ben Vereen, dad?
I’d like to think I was. So, one more time, Gerald, and remember: Jazz hands, okay?
P.S. Ben Vereen was an enormous talent who died far, far too early.
