May I confess something else about Carol Reed‘s The Third Man (’49), an opinion that no film buff is allowed to hold, much less convey? A view that only a very bad person would share in the first place? An opinion so outre and unmentionable that…well, I’ve said it.

I don’t like the damn zither music. I’m sorry but it’s always irritated me. Zither music is fine for a scene or two, but it’s heard through the whole film and after a while you feel worn down, and it’s like “enough already.”

I recognize, obviously, that the zither is The Third Man and vice versa. It’s the signature element, much more so than the ferris wheel or the deeply shadowed sewers or the cuckoo clock or that final scene in which Alida Valli walks right past Joseph Cotten outside the cemetery.

The 2015 4K Bluray is the only one to own.

I’ll never forget how much I hated Criterion’s Third Man Bluray, which came out in 2009. I was consumed with loathing. I regarded that Bluray as one of the worst grainstorm nightmares of all time.