There are so many potentially enjoyable films out there that it seems a waste of time to watch a film that one has already seen. And I rarely do. And yet recently I watched two films that I have seen not just once but a few times before. And it got me thinking about what makes a film so good. It is definitely not high production values, a stellar cast, dazzling special effects or frenetic action, the stuff that seems to power the blockbuster films. Instead it is good writing, direction, and strong character portrayals.

One film was The Castle a 1997 low-budget Australian film that I have praised highly before. ‘Low budget’ hardly does it justice. The cast is largely unknown outside Australia and it took less than two weeks to film at a cost A$750,000. To save costs, the name of the family (Kerrigan) was chosen so that the film makers could use trucks that belonged to an actual towing company with that name.

The Kerrigan home, in the outer Melbourne blue-collar suburb of Coolaroo, is filled with love as well as pride in their modest lifestyle, but their happiness is threatened when developers attempt the compulsory acquisition of their house to expand the neighbouring airport.

The Kerrigan house is built in a largely undeveloped housing tract, on a toxic landfill, and directly adjacent to an airport runway. Despite all this, sweet-natured family patriarch Darryl (Michael Caton) believes that he lives in the lap of luxury. He busies himself by driving a tow truck, racing greyhounds, and constantly adding (and only half-finishing) renovations to the house. The rest of the Kerrigan clan shares and supports his enthusiasm in every way.

The David versus Goliath struggle between them and the the developers forms the basis of the plot. The Kerrigans are a close-knit, loving, naive, and earnest family with a doting father who is immensely proud of his family that finds enjoyment in what the rest of us might consider mundane or even undesirable. With such films, there is always the risk of condescension, of making fun of unsophisticated people, but that danger is avoided here. The innate decency of the family is what dominates the film and means that you are with them all the way. It is an absolutely wonderful film that I will undoubtedly watch again some time in the future.

Here’s the trailer.

The other film The Third Man (1949) is very different and repeatedly watchable for the same reasons: good writing, direction, and strong character portrayals. It was also shot on a relatively small budget, though not as extreme as The Castle. Set in the ruins of post-war Vienna, it follows Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), an American writer of pulp westerns, who arrives just in time to learn that it is the day of the funeral of his boyhood friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) who had invited him to come but had died in an accident. Martins is puzzled by inconsistencies in the story of Lime’s death and is disconcerted by a British army officer (Trevor Howard) who hints that Lime was an unsavory character. Martins investigates and falls in love with Lime’s girl friend Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli), who does not reciprocate.

The film is moody, in black-and-white, with plenty of shadows and odd camera angles. No one who has seen the film will ever forget the music score, as described by Roger Ebert.

Has there ever been a film where the music more perfectly suited the action than in Carol Reed’s “The Third Man”? The score was performed on a zither by Anton Karas, who was playing in a Vienna beerhouse one night when Reed heard him. The sound is jaunty but without joy, like whistling in the dark. It sets the tone; the action begins like an undergraduate lark and then reveals vicious undertones.

There are some unforgettable set pieces. One is the the scene where Lime and Martins meet on a Ferris wheel and another is the ending with a very long, silent shot of Anna walking along a long straight road directly towards the camera, with Martins standing by the side of the road, waiting for her. We do not know if she will ignore him or whether they will join up and walk off together and the tension is palpable.

(A minor point. I have written before of a pet peeve of mine in films where a character who is shot from the front is thrown violently backwards, sometimes crashing through a window. This is utterly absurd. In older films, as in this one, the character who is shot just stops and then slowly falls to the ground. That is how it should be. But in modern films, the shot character gets flung back as if they had been hit with a cannonball.)

Here is the trailer.