THE GREATEST CYNIC OF ALL

Jan -- Read the review, and he's right. Genius or not, the Big Boy was the engineer of his doom. I have an audiotape where his pals (John Houseman, notably, because he was the only man who could control the boy wizard) reminisce about the early theatrical triumphs, when Welles was dilatory and frequently drunk, but as magnetically inspirational as Jesus. In the sudden discipline of live radio, where the clock was merciless, no escape, he would conduct gifted actors in hastily improvised scripts, with few seconds to spare, and could inspire amazing compressed performances, all on time. He would mount a podium, baton in hand, Svengali eyes like the searching beam of a lighthouse, and guide something that existed only in his mind, making these folks his hypnotized puppets. Then he would collapse, drink a flagon of Scotch, and eat about five pheasants, feathers and all. An amazing character.

Thanks for re-opening the door to my Welles obsession. Thought I'd put it to sleep. My old man took me to see "The Third Man" in 1950, largely because he wanted to hear the zither music of Anton Karras. (My old man's mother played the instrument.) OK. But something happened in that theater -- I saw the knowing, witty, corrupt grin of Harry Lime, and it's never left me. A hideous introduction to the adult world. The cat is at his feet, a car goes by, a window is opened, light is spilled -- and there he is: Harry Lime. Think about the name -- that's what they use to cover the disposable dead. Well sir, there is no greater moment in all of movies, and Welles's career follows Lime's, except that Welles was essentially an innocent. Doom, man, Doom.

-- Mr. Cheer

As Mr. Cheer has often reminded me, Welles improvised Limes's most celebrated piece of dialogue in the great Ferris wheel scene when he's confronted by Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotten) about his abhorrent criminal behavior (such as selling medicine on the black market, thus depriving sick children of medication and resulting in many deaths). "In Italy," Lime replies, "for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed -- but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock!"