*

…The lines you refer to probably start more like lines on an instrument, say a zither, and then proceed to those structural supports of a Big Wheel, as the shadow side is gradually revealed.

Good film that.

Well worth a second look, although, Holly in the final analysis fails utterly.

He destroys the Shadow and the girl walks off without him…

Poor, poor Holly…

Big Wheels

*

… ‘I didn’t see his face. He was just ordinary. He might have been anybody.’

Did you get to see the film yet?

It is even better than I remembered, particularly when viewed from a certain angle…

‘Harry never grew up. The world grew up around him that’s all – and buried him.’

Riddles and Runes

*

 … Pity you have had no time for the film, although I feared that might be the case.

There appear to be a number of Dashwood-like Golden Balls on the roofs of many of the buildings of the Josefplatz, and something is missing from over the doorway of ‘Harry’s Gaff’…

Weirdly, the ‘timeline’ in the film is authentic, by which I mean that it was shot in 1948 and the events in the film purportedly take place in that same year.

I shall bring a copy along with me, when we head north, or as Jaw-Dark would have it to ‘The North!’ Good book, that…

Lunatic Fringe

*

… There is no reason to suspect that the film is anything other than what it purports to be in a traditional, nay almost classic sense, save for the cinematography…

They seem to have sculpted friezes around the ‘Golden Globes’ don’t they?

The abundant use of the ‘Dutch Angle’ may be indicative of more than the lead character’s disorientation in an alien, war-torn environment. More even than the apparent mis-reading of his old friend’s motives for friendship…

They could symbolise the light of reason, or simply the sun. They could even be ‘alchemical’. All of which is intriguing to say the very least.

…If post-war Vienna represents the fractured modern psyche, then Holly is a man lost and in search of his shadow…

…All this, in the film, is intricately bound up with the ‘feminine perspective’.

Any ideas on the identity of the caryatids gathering around ‘Harry’s doorway’?

They were much later additions, apparently, and utterly preposterous!

Our cinematographer is careful never to shoot them ‘face on’ bless him, a true artist in every sense of the word…

Shadow-Play

*

*

Well, it may be a palace but it is still only a ‘semi, which sort of also lends new meaning to the term, ‘Gated Institution’.

‘Gates’ being how the Caryatids are now described, and it is not your usual film noir location either, although the front rooms were once let as apartments.

It is so spacious that in the film Holly has to run everywhere so as not to call attention to the fact.

Sure enough, the character of Anna is given most of the pivotal lines of the film.

When asked if she loved Harry she says, ‘How can you know something like that afterwards? All I know is that I want to be dead too.’

As improvements to the facade ‘Our Ladies’ were introduced to better fit the other three sides of the square.

They may have tried to outdo what was already there as a statement of defiance.

The missing Golden Globe would have been removed to preserve the view out of one of the windows.

When Holly stops by at a bad time, Anna says, ‘I’ve been frightened, I’ve been alone, I’ve been without friends and money but I’ve never know anything like this.’

Presumably, the trace of Harry’s memory.

When Holly discovers the extent of Harry’s racketeering Anna says, ‘Stop making him in your image. Harry was real. He wasn’t just your friend and my lover. He was Harry.’

Old Moore’s…

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