Crawling Out Of The Sewer


Each time I watch The Third Man I discover something new. This past weekend, while catching the third act of this classic Noir, I came across two new observations:

          1. Scorsese paid homage to a key post-funeral scene by replicating the same scene in The Departed (more on that in a upcoming blog)
          2. The physical and visual intensity of our protagonist running around and then trying to get out of the post-war Vienna sewer while he's being chased by military police is a beautiful metaphor for many of our favorite Noir characters: even if they are not in the sewer itself, their moral compass certainly is.

Orson Welles, as Harry Lime, who waters down medicine that then kills the very children whose mothers survived the bombs, is both monster and charmer. Charming monsters are the scariest. Because they live their lives keeping one foot in the sewer while the other (to paraphrase Ruth Bader Ginsburg) on our necks.

I thought about that, and the theme of water in Chinatown, the lost, haunted boat in Deep Calm, the tormented relationships in Mystic River. What is it about water - whether it's above ground or under ground, nature-made or man-made, that can go from safe to threatening within a split second?

One of the plot lines of the Cleveland City screenplay involves a lakefront development. Positioned to be the exciting, new place to live, work and play in the 216, that original story goes all the way back to when I first arrived here in 2003 and met the then Mayor Jane Campbell. Back then she was talking about doing something here "like in Chicago" after her talk I came up to her, shook her hand, introduced myself as a freshly minted MBA who grew up in Chicago, gave her my card and offered my help. I never did hear from her, but it does look like 15 years later that development is finally happening.

In a life-imitates-art-imitates-life cycle, the waterfront development in Cleveland City takes place in the present. And as with any development on an important piece of land, there must be first be a government-approved clearing. Then? There must be digging. And when you dig what will you find? The secrets of a city.

There's an Argentinian proverb a friend once taught me: If you go looking for shit, you will find shit.

Well, I challenge that proverb to say that sometimes it's time for the shit to surface. Because its stench can no longer hide. Not under any number of layers of land or gallons of water.

Because sometimes even the most self-righteous, self-important and self-sacrificial characters are actually no better than the rats running around a sewer, gnawing other people's lives and doing so with charm while wearing expensive coats and being loved by the women who took pity on them.

This is the essence of Noir. This is the essence of Cleveland City. 


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