Q. I need to share this blasphemous rumor with you; it is said Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire will co-star in a remake of "The Third Man." Can't we just all agree that some movies are sacred?
Hisham Teymour, Mount Prospect

A. My instinctive reaction was to throw up. On second thought, I'll reserve judgment until I see this shameless project. Some remakes are good enough to stand beside their originals; Herzog's "Nosferatu," for example. The screenplay is allegedly being written by Steven Knight, who wrote "Dirty Pretty Things" and "Eastern Promises," two splendid films. The original film was written by (*cough*) Graham Greene. A director isn't set.

But it's not the story, is it, so much as the look and feel and sound of that supreme masterpiece. Can a remake even be contemplated without zither music and the immortal "The Third Man" theme? Will the tilt shots and oblique POV angles be preserved? Will the classic chase through the sewers of Vienna, with one (1) off-screen gunshot, be preserved? Will it be shot in color, when "The Third Man" is one of the most black and white films of all time? And what actor dares to invoke Orson Welles as Harry Lime? The undertaking seems foolhardy.