"The Third Man" and "Seven Days To Noon" were filmed so long ago they are old enough to be old age pensioners, but these two gripping films remain classics of postwar british cinema and fine time capsules into the mindset of western civilization post-1945.
Seven Days is an allegory about American 'go-it-alone' atomic diplomacy while the Third Man , Harry Lime , acts as a stand-in for Josef Mengele in a film allegory that sees the ultimate expression of evil being the murdering of innocent children by the doctors they trust - in this case , a corruption of penicillin diplomacy.
In Seven Days, an individual , an atomic scientist, takes on himself the role that America was currently taking on for itself vis vis the world.
He wants to bring about world peace and in his pride sees himself without evil and so feels morally right to threaten to kill everyone with an atomic bomb ..... unless they become peace-loving .
Stevenson's best explanation for the instant success of Jekyll and Hyde with the general public was that the ultimate sin has long been regarded as excessive pride, the idea that you are without evil.
He sees Jekyll, under his public veneer, as being excessively selfish and cowardly and this is why the evil Hyde is unleashed.
(Today we tend to see Jekyll-like figures as at least ordinarily good and Hyde as totally evil --- altering Stevenson's story completely.)
The Third Man is set in Hitler's birthplace, Austria, right after the war.
Penicillin is still in short supply everywhere outside of America but enough penicillin has been provided by the western Allies, as part of their penicillin diplomacy , to at least treat the most innocent members of this Nazi-oriented culture - the young children dying of bacterial infections.
But Lime dilutes the penicillin so he can sell it twice - once for kids dying of meningitis and once to unfaithful married roues with VD.
In neither case does it work (or work very well) - but in the case of the children they are thought to be getting the best medicine and so are not given alternative medicines.
In fact they die truly horrible deaths.
Lime says they are just dots, dots like the children on the ground were to bomber pilots - who'd regret a few more dots being killed, in return for a share of vast profits?
These two films remain watchable - partly for their visual characteristics but mostly because they still raise fundamental questions about the basic human ability, as individuals and as entire nations to be both good and evil, turn on turn , Jekyll and Hyde....
Seven Days is an allegory about American 'go-it-alone' atomic diplomacy while the Third Man , Harry Lime , acts as a stand-in for Josef Mengele in a film allegory that sees the ultimate expression of evil being the murdering of innocent children by the doctors they trust - in this case , a corruption of penicillin diplomacy.
In Seven Days, an individual , an atomic scientist, takes on himself the role that America was currently taking on for itself vis vis the world.
He wants to bring about world peace and in his pride sees himself without evil and so feels morally right to threaten to kill everyone with an atomic bomb ..... unless they become peace-loving .
Jekyll and Hyde
Stevenson's best explanation for the instant success of Jekyll and Hyde with the general public was that the ultimate sin has long been regarded as excessive pride, the idea that you are without evil.
He sees Jekyll, under his public veneer, as being excessively selfish and cowardly and this is why the evil Hyde is unleashed.
(Today we tend to see Jekyll-like figures as at least ordinarily good and Hyde as totally evil --- altering Stevenson's story completely.)
The Third Man is set in Hitler's birthplace, Austria, right after the war.
Penicillin is still in short supply everywhere outside of America but enough penicillin has been provided by the western Allies, as part of their penicillin diplomacy , to at least treat the most innocent members of this Nazi-oriented culture - the young children dying of bacterial infections.
But Lime dilutes the penicillin so he can sell it twice - once for kids dying of meningitis and once to unfaithful married roues with VD.
In neither case does it work (or work very well) - but in the case of the children they are thought to be getting the best medicine and so are not given alternative medicines.
In fact they die truly horrible deaths.
Lime says they are just dots, dots like the children on the ground were to bomber pilots - who'd regret a few more dots being killed, in return for a share of vast profits?
These two films remain watchable - partly for their visual characteristics but mostly because they still raise fundamental questions about the basic human ability, as individuals and as entire nations to be both good and evil, turn on turn , Jekyll and Hyde....
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