The Third Man with Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton. You have a criminal who is thought to be dead, and is investigated by a writer. I'm not saying it's the same story line, it just reminded me of that movie. It would make for a good double feature.
Nobody gets to be a cowboy forever.
I think it also had some elements in common with The Usual Suspects.
shareThematically, yes. The Third Man was filmed on location in Vienna, while Demetrios was Warners back lot Turko-Balkan, with a fringe or "borderline" ambiance, somewhere between what used to be called the Orient and Europe proper. There's a didactic undercurrent in Third Man that's not there at all in Demetrios. Also, the tale of the latter, while convoluted in its telling, made watching it fun and larger than life. There was a pleasure to be got in the way its story unfolded. Third Man's Orson Welles-Carol Reed 'artsy" (I'm not knocking it, just sayin'); while Demetrios is polished and professional. The Reed films appears to be striving for Greatness, the Negulescu aiming to please viewers with tastes similar to those of its director and the man whose novel it was adapted from (Eric Amber, A Coffin For Demetrios). For sheer entertainment, Demetrios is far and above my favorite of the two. Third Man makes me think, is often fun to watch,--it's certainly not without humor--and yet in the end I find that it makes me think too much, and about too many things.
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