Saturday, January 31, 2009

Orson Welles in The Third Man

At the peak of a Ferris wheel in post-World War II Vienna, Harry Lime says to our hero Holly Martins:

"Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds 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 — the only way you can save money nowadays."

Just before they part ways, Harry tells Holly:

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, 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."

You can watch the whole scene right here.

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