Holy mother of tat! The Third Man is coming to 4K
The Third Man is a seminal work of European film noir. Directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene and starring, among others, Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, its place in Great Film Canon is undisputed (it placed at 63rd the Sight & Sound Top 100).
The Criterion Collection blu-ray, which has been out of print for a number of years, can fetch more than £100 on eBay.
It is good news then that it is coming to 4K in early November, courtesy of Studiocanal.
What is unnerving is all the extras (read: tat) coming with it.
This 75th anniversary special edition will include the usual semi-interesting guff such as a 64-page booklet — with new essays on the film, a fully annotated shooting script, four artcards (what is one expected to do with these, by the way?) and a poster of Nico Delort’s newly-commissioned artwork.
But the cherry on the tat cake (or the jewel in the tat crown, depending on which cliche you prefer) is surely the decision to use pop-up rigid box packaging that — get this — plays the famous theme from The Third Man upon opening.
How’s that for a novelty/gimmick! And it can be yours for the princely sum of £45.
(One cinephile quipped on Twitter: “How much do they charge to NOT play the theme every time you open the box?”)
Now, this is a bit of an industry trend, even if none have gone so far as to actually make a music box out of a release.
Second Sight were charging £35 for a blu-ray of Chopper that included a 70-page booklet and six artcards.
Earlier this year 1996's Twister was released on 4K with a box within a box concept (yo dawg, I heard you like boxes…). There’s also a production notes booklet, a double-sided poster and, you guessed it, four artcards.
But Studiocanal are by far the worst offenders. Their 4K release of The Conversation earlier this year included, again, rigid box packaging with magnetic closing, a 64-page booklet, the original soundtrack cassette tape(???) and both original and new posters. RRP £44 (hey, it’s sold out).
Surely the most egregious offender, although yet to officially enter the market place, is the £80 Se7en (Seven) special edition 4K steelbook that you can pre-order, scheduled for release in… December 2025.
What does that £80 get you? ‘What’s in the box’ packaging, a Frosted Pine little trees air freshener, seven Deadly Sin comic books, seven Deadly Sin crime scene artcards, a double-sided A3 poster, ‘Help Me’ glow-in-the-dark artcard, an investigation chalkboard artcard and a numbered sticker of authenticity. Phew.
So, Studiocanal’s latest tat-filled release could have been foreseen. Back in June I even quipped to a friend that the edition might include a novelty spirit level as part of the packaging (William Wyler is alleged to have sent Carol Reed a spirit level after watching The Third Man, apparently taking issue with the heavy use of Dutch angles).
But there is cycle to this. There is the boujie 4K ‘special edition’ then, a few months later, a more reasonably priced ‘normal’ edition rolls along that is stripped back and with a much lower RRP (Lawrence of Arabia excepted, grumble grumble).
But there is an ever-increasing desire to make these special editions more and more ‘special’ in an effort to drive interest. They are being loaded with useless paraphernalia.
What’s next? A 4K edition of Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing complete with clown mask? Citizen Kane with a scale model of the Rosebud sled (spoiler alert, by the way)?
Creators and collectors need to calm down a bit, please.
