If film images act as the modern world’s hieroglyphics, then Still Dots 70 must clearly be the pictogram for sadness: from Robert Krasker’s silky black lighting to the neglected old-world beauty of Dario Simoni’s set decoration to Alida Valli’s spectral presence as Anna, this shot glimmers softly with heartache. Of course this impression is affirmed by what has come immediately beforehand…

Sight and Sound Magazine unveiled the highly anticipated results of their ambitious survey of the Top 50 Greateat Films of All Time last week with much hubbub. What started in 1952, and has been published every ten years since, has built into a critical mass of film glory that’s hard not to revel in. Tallying 846 top ten lists from critics worldwide representing votes for 2,045 different…

This frame marks a sea change in the character of Major Calloway, a man whose brusque and callous nature has painted him as Holly’s antagonist throughout this film. We have occupied Holly’s gaze for much of this film, seeing Calloway as a suit, a figure that stands for an authoritarian view of society. Calloway has been Holly’s personification of “the man,” even if he is a particularly friendly…

Once again, we can’t get through a Still Dots post without mentioning, at least briefly, Freud and the uncanny: a man thought dead has been found, not only alive but beaming a mischievous smirk, on the streets of Vienna. Has Harry Lime–who might be described as the personification of the Id, driven by the pleasure principle, unresponsive to the demands (or ethical interpretations) of reality–truly…

We have often brought up the topic of doppelgangers, doubling, and even quantum mechanics but today’s still brings us into another frame of reference. That of multiple dimensionality. Take a look, for instance, at last Thursday’s still: Here we are presented with a doubling or doppelganger again, in the form of the monolithic object around which our action circles. Holly has drunkenly pursued the…

Where better than Vienna, Freud’s hometown and a “shadowy city of ghosts,” to encounter the phantom of a friend thought dead? Holly Martins, a day away from returning to the United States, has made a shocking discovery: Harry Lime is alive, reanimated by the smirking face of Orson Welles, and apparently skulking around the doorways of Vienna, unseen yet permeating the city like an otherworldly fog…

For you few devoted readers who haven’t seen The Third Man (though I can’t imagine that you truly exist at this point) we have carefully avoided spilling the beans up to this point, but after this frame, the cat is out of the bag. This is the face of Harry Lime. True, we have spent much of our analysis talking about Orson Welles, and you may have been wondering this whole time “Hey, isn’t Orson…

After drinking away his sorrows at a Vienna strip club and forsaking carnal pleasure for the company of Anna Schmidt, Holly shows up at her apartment distraught, lonely, and at least three sheets to the wind. As Holly arrives at her door, we see Anna in a gorgeous moonlit close-up (covered by a bedsheet embroidered with the initials “HL”), wide awake and troubled for the same exact reason as Holly…

Do you have a 16mm masterpiece waiting to be discovered? How about an 8mm film of your family vacation from 30 years ago? What about that Super 8 that you found at your grandparents’ house? Now is your chance to have that film inspected and possibly screened at the Walker Art Center during Home Movie Night on Thursday, July 12. Bring in your Super 8, 8mm, or 16mm home movies between 4 and 6:30 pm…