Orson Welles' Famous 'Cuckoo Clock' Speech From 'The Third Man'

Last night I was thinking of one of my favorite movies, Carol Reed's The Third Man,and my favorite scene - Orson Welles' (as the nefarious Harry Lime) famous 'Cuckoo Clock' speech in which he lectures Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotten) aboard the Riesenrad, a giant Ferris wheel in Vienna: 

Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty 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. So long, Holly.

 

Welles inserted those lines into the movie; they were not in Graham Greene's original script. How true are Welles' words? See here.

Fabulous movie!

"Oh, I still do believe in God, old man. I believe in God and mercy and all that. But the dead are happier dead. They don't miss much here, poor devils." -- Harry Lime

Comments

[Garvin]

Thanks for writing that down so I could search it. Great speech, was telling my wife about it.

[cuckoo]

Orsen Wells was certainly a great actor, one of a kind. He was outstanding in the Third Man.