The 4th Man (1984)

Admirable film.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Let's just not mince words about this, I think Verhoeven would prefer it this way. Because even though he intended this as a kind of farce set up for the critics, the thing has genuine appeal for most people.It is no longer dangerous as might have been felt to be at the time, no longer quite an insane stylistic bravura. Since then we've had Cronenberg and Lynch, who delved deeper and subverted more slyly. Since then Verhoeven has delivered more biting satires. And if you insist on some ironic appreciation, prior to this we had Polanski and the Italian giallo, where you could read the feverish psychosexual histrionics as your own campy rendition knowing that you were not simply playing at the hands of a smarmy filmmaker.So what is left is a kind of update on Les Diaboliques. The caveat: how much of the lurid sexual fantasy that we're caught into is being hallucinated by the imaginative writer and how much of it actually true. Old news for '83.Piled on top of that we have deliberately overcooked religious symbolism, synchronous overlaps from Hitchcock and noir, and the film world conspiring to assist the nightmare unfold as we dreamed it would.Of course all these things, as well as the many faces that Verhoeven has used to subvert America when he was finally invited over on the strength of this, the filmmaker employs as cruel whims he can lift and put back in place.It is a tight construct, proof of his penchant for cinema all else aside. The writer begins to imagine a narrative around him as soon as the camera is set on him, and centered around this woman holding it. From his end, he is conspiring from inside that narrative to manipulate for sex that escapes him. Of course he soon discovers that he is just another play actor at the hands of a cruel maker; it happens with the discovery of film footage shot by her, shot by Verhoeven in just the way to make us imagine along with this man more sinister plots around the pictures.Of course it's the whole idea that we're none the wiser by the end about the maker's intentions filming these bits. Verhoeven's farce is that where we zealously imagined depth and connection, there might be none outside our feverish ramblings to interpret.It's a fine film, but since then we've had Cronenberg and Lynch where this ploy is one of many on the nature of reality. This is styled to be oblique but is easy to read, with few rewards for doing so. It is sex with all the animated writhing but none of the passion that penetrates deep.

Not even a year ago I probably would have said that 'The Fourth Man' insults my intelligence as a viewer for lacking a good sense of realism among other things, but it really is an unapologetic Catholic fairy tale put into the dress of a thriller. There isn't much about this plot that is realistic, some of it even was played deliberately campy, it seems, I'm especially thinking of the flashbacks that show the deaths of certain characters, if you have seen the film you will know which scene I'm thinking of, it's like out of a Hammer film production. If we wouldn't know better from Paul Verhoeven's body of work we would assume that the film was made by a religious fanatic who really believes in occultism, prevision, the literal truth of the bible and other mythical matters and wants the audience to believe all of them too. 'De vierde man' - if it wants to be cherished - certainly requires its audience to just roll with it and accept those things as a given for the sake of the film.What really is the intended appeal for the audience is questionable overall since we know from start on that the blonde (Christine) has nothing good in mind for Gerard (while for long passages it plays it relatively straight as a romance where the viewer is supposed to care for both characters) and that it involves fantastic elements, although to which extend those things are true and prevalent we find out during the course of the movie, and I have to say that it goes all the way in both affairs. How it uses homosexuality as a plot device...I don't want to say it trivializes the topic, but it really is used without much psychological depth, it doesn't make Gerard a much more complex character, instead it feels like it's just used to drive along the plot and as such it feels tacked on. But it's funny how this creates a plot situation that is reminiscent of 'Lolita'. Gerard agrees to stay with the blonde just to get to her boyfriend who he is in love with, so Gerard plays the lover in order to reach real love, and again it is sort of a taboo love, certainly not as taboo as the love of Humbert Humbert to the 12-year-old Dolores, but still.No doubt 'De vierde man' should have an appeal to fans of surrealist cinema with its blunt symbolism and the protagonist's fears turned into physical reality, without the filmmakers giving a priority to plausibility or even coherence, not even coherence of characters. Christine not only is the personified evil who in retrospect can't convince as a being with a soul, but her ability to foresee so precisely how Gerard would act upon her vicious setups can't make her human, and that's where we come full circle, because it is an unapologetic fairy tale and as such it's not necessary for its characters to be convincing human beings, it's enough for them to be human-like. For films though I can not so easily accept this concept and it's a reason why eventually I wasn't all too satisfied with the film. But I have become more open to films that lack plausibility if there is a reason for it. In this case there is a reason but I'm not convinced of the preciousness of it. It made for an entertaining thriller that shows some inventiveness and trippy pictures but that I think substantially is eventually not more than a rather shallow Catholic fantasy.

Paul Verhoeven has one of the strangest oeuvres of any major director: he started off making art-house films in his native Netherlands before moving to Hollywood where he began making subversive genre pieces which are often seen as mere entertainments by the mainstream crowd. 1983's The Fourth Man was the last film he made before moving to the U.S. and it seems to have been a transitional film for him.From the beginning of The Fourth Man it's clear that the film will be seen from the perspective of the famous albeit impoverished author Gerard. In a seeming homage to Carol Reed's similarly titled 1949 film The Third Man the film begins with an author making a trip to speak to a crowd of literature enthusiasts. The similarities end there, however, as Gerard runs into no major complications before arriving at the auditorium and the speech itself goes fairly smoothly. In spite of the relative ease with which he completes this function we know that the author is somewhat troubled as he has realistic fantasies about murdering his roommate before leaving his house and he also has a surreal fantasy involving a hotel he sees advertised and a detached eyeball growing out of a door's peephole. That he sometimes has trouble keeping his fantasies separate from reality is made all the more clear when an anecdote he tells is exposed as untrue and he admits that he "lie{s} the truth until {he} no longer knows whether something did or didn't happen." The Fourth Man is full of surreal fantasies and dreams which are made all the more disturbing because it's very easy to see how they relate to events which we have seen occur and because they sometimes foreshadow events which haven't occurred yet. Between the effectiveness of the unreal sequences and Verhoeven's careful editing style this ends up being the most atmospheric film this side of Don't Look Now and like that film this one is full of ambiguity. Unlike that film The Fourth Man is also perversely funny as Gerard's deeply held Catholic beliefs seep into every aspect of his life including sexuality. He naturally associates a female hair stylist he knows intimately with the Biblical Delilah though he fears she'll remove an even more important symbol of masculinity with her scissors. In an erotic fantasy sequence that would make Luis Buñuel blush he substitutes a man he's attracted to for a life size statue of Christ on the cross.The Fourth Man is a horror film which manages to bring the viewer into the mind of the protagonist while still maintaining a certain ambiguity: it certainly seems as if Gerard is in danger but it may just be more of his "lying the truth." The film is also full of both subtle and not so subtle visual symbolism which helps make it a unique and satisfying cinematic experience.

I saw this movie in my international cinema class and was grossed out from get go. This movie is nothing but one scene of blatant shock value after the next.The 4th Man is about an alcoholic writer named Reve, who has visions of his in-pending danger. He meets up with a woman named Christine when giving a lecture at a local book club, and only decides to stay with her when he discovers how attractive her boyfriend is. To put it plainer, Reve likes the Dutch sausage. So Reve concocts a plan to seduce Christine's boyfriend so he can ultimately have sex with him. But its later discovered that Christine has had 3 previous husbands, who she all murdered. Now Reve and Christine's boyfriend could be "THE 4TH MAN." The storyline makes sense with no plot holes. The editing and everything else that is technical about this movie is perfectly fine. The movie is just gross and I felt the need to vomit in some parts. Basically, this isn't my cup of tea.The movie opens with Reve getting out of bed in JUST a t-shirt. So in the very beginning, you get to see Reve's lovely pecker flopping around as he walks around his cramped apartment in a hangover state. Later on he has a dream where his pecker gets cut off by a pair of scissors, and they do show it along with the blood fountain that ensues. Reve fondles a statue of Jesus and has homosexual sex in a mausoleum. Plus there's a lot of blood. More blood than all the Freddy Krueger movies combined.Not that I have anything against "shocking" scenes, but this movie is just so blatant when it comes to shocking. The whole movie is revolved around the shock value.So if any of this is your cup of tea, watch this movie. Otherwise, stay far far far far far away from this one. My mind is still scarred.