The 1949 thriller [ITALIC “The Third Man”] suggests that serious business at an amusement park is best conducted on a Ferris wheel. In a cabin on the Viennese Great Wheel (Wiener Reisenrad) at the Prater park, Joseph Cotten’s good guy and Orson Welles’ bad guy — former friends — discuss the latter’s fake death, the police, the Russians and good and evil in general. Confronted about his racket, Harry Lime (Welles) maintains his cool — something he probably wouldn’t have been able to do on a roller coaster. The two get off the wheel, and Lime utters one of cinema’s most giddily evil statements. “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed. But they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock!”
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