NUMBER FOUR: In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

NUMBER FOUR: THE THIRD MAN

It's one of those things you can't avoid. The more you try to run from something in your past, the more likely it is to follow you and turn up when you least expect (or want) it to be there. All the characters in this movie are haunted and running in the shadows from the things that spook them. 

This movie - already excellent on its own in every way, IMHO - moved me because it so clearly reflected the kinds of stories my parents used to tell about post-World War II Europe. After struggling to survive for years and years, as one army would march out and another would march into town, most people had a host of secrets and cloaked alliances they used to get by and get on with their lives. 

After the war, nearly everyone had something to hide. My mom told me that once they knew the war was over - really over - her father when out into their backyard and either buried or destroyed everything associated with his service as a soldier in the German army. He didn't want anyone to know where he'd served or what he'd done. To this day, I don't know most of the details. I doubt if I ever will.

When my father and his father were released from a concentration camp, they both struggled to find a way to make a living while waiting for my Uncle Howard - who had already immigrated to the U.S. - to get them passage on a boat to the Port of New Orleans. Eventually, they found their way into dealing  in black market commodities like sugar and flour, which were strictly regulated at the time. My father - who was normally willing to talk openly about just about anything - only told me about his illicit days in the sucrose game late in his life, when he was sure he could no longer be arrested for it. Despite the passage of time, he still lived with a kind of fear about being found out.

But we all live with secrets to some degree or another, I think. And the fear associated with them does something to the person who keeps the secret, if they consider it something truly bad, shameful or ugly. This movie comes just about the closest I've ever seen to showing the long term toll on the hearts and minds of some who tried to find a way to live again despite their secrets.