First, thank you for taking the time to make the recommendation.
I have seen the film (and all of Bogart's and John Huston's films), and so many old films anticipate the current crop of movies, but with more subtlety, plot, and better acting and direction. I will abjure the temptation to go off on a rant about the sad lack of knowledge of the foundations and underpinnings of current films demonstrated in classic films.
A generation born thinking film making started with Steven Speilberg, and judge "Titanic" as fine film making, and have zero knowledge of the truly great, original, innovative, ground breaking films of the past, which established the language of film, have no basis, no foundation upon which to judge and evaluate the current crop of mostly...er...not such good films.
I'm not challenging anyone's right to like, or dislike, any film. I'm just saddened that a lack of knowledge of the classic film puts one at a judgmental disadvantage.
Ah...so much for abjuring a rant!
Ah, yes. To a very large (if not almost complete) extent I find myself in agreement with you.
"Titanic", "Jurassic Park", "Forrest Gump", "Saving Private Ryan", etc are - some of them - well made cinematic offerings which entertain. They don't inform, and they most certainly don't educate.
Of course, many of the movies made in the 30s, 40s, 50, and so on were poorly made, money spinners, churned out simply to cash in on the new form of media that had become so popular; but the true classics of that era are spell binding.
They took a new art form, a new means of communication, and showed utter mastery of it. This meant using the medium of the motion picture to tell a story, where mood, pace, acting, script, lighting, cast and inspired direction all combined (at its best) to deliver a tour de force.
Frankly, so much of what is on offer today is derivative.....and shallow. And ultimately quite boring.....and deeply unsatisfying. To me, it is the cinematic equivalent of fast food; it satisfies a need, and is promptly forgotten five minutes later, irrespective of the bells and whistles attached in the form of CGI, or bloated budgets, or mega media advertising campaigns.
A movie such as 'The Third Man', or 'Sunset Boulevard', or 'The Maltese Falcon' has you riveted, stunned at the sinuous plots, superb acting and scene setting, excellent (and yes, literate) scripts, intelligent thought-provoking story telling, and, get this, such movies also have the courage of their convictions by saluting the emotional intelligence of the viewer for they allow the viewer to experience an ambiguous, an ambivalent, or downright downbeat, or even, sometimes, a bleak ending. Such endings resonate with me, and I respect and admire them far more than the more usual, eh, offerings.
Actually, as a European, I cannot abide the schmaltz, that saccharine overdose of sentimentality and mawkishness that comes as part of the package of so many US movies; it is something I find cringeworthy, and it is blessedly rare to find it in European movies.
There are modern classics in the US - Clint Eastwood's superb 'Unforgiven' comes to mind, and another movie I was hugely impressed by is - John Sayles's highly intelligent, subtle, thought-provoking, moving and atmospheric 'Lone Star'. Unfortunately, these are the exception, not the rule.....
