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The Third Man (1949) is a British film noir directed by Carol Reed. The screenplay was written by novelist Graham Greene. Greene wrote a novella of the same name in preparation for the screenplay, and this was published in 1950. The film won the 1949 Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, a British Academy Award for Best Film, and an Academy Award for Best Black and White Cinematography in 1950. The film was also voted the best British film of all time by the British Film Institute, while in 2004 the magazine Total Film named it the third greatest British film. The film also placed 57th on the American Film Institute's list of top American films, "100 Years... 100 Movies" in 1998, an accolade which is controversial because the film's only American connection was its executive co-producer, David O. Selznick; the other two, Sir Alexander Korda and Carol Reed, were British. In 2005, viewers of BBC Television's Newsnight Review voted the film their fourth most favourite of all time; it was the only film in the top five made prior to 1970.
PlotSynopsisThe story is set in Austria's capital city, Vienna just after the Second World War when the city was divided into four zones controlled by the Allied powers of Great Britain, France, the USA and the USSR. The central character is an American pulp western author Holly Martins who is seeking an old friend, Harry Lime, who has offered him the opportunity to work with him in Vienna. DetailsUpon his arrival in Vienna, Martins heads to stay with his friend Harry Lime. When he arrives at Lime's apartment, Martins learns that Lime had been recently killed by a lorry while crossing the street. Shocked, Martins heads to the cemetery to attend Harry's funeral, where he meets a British military police officer, Major Calloway. After the services, Calloway gives Martins a lift to his hotel and advises the American to leave Vienna as he can do nothing more than get himself into trouble. At the hotel, Holly agrees to speak to an assembly of members of the local book club and arranges a meeting with a friend of Lime's named Baron Kurtz. Holly meets the man in the Mozart Café to discuss Harry's death. Kurtz relates that he and another friend of Harry's had picked him up and brought him over to the side of the street, where Harry had asked them to take care of Holly and Anna, Harry's actress girlfriend. Kurtz tells Holly which theatre Anna works in, but advises against investigating. Holly heads to Anna's theatre and arranges a meeting with her. During their conversation, Holly becomes suspicious and wonders if Harry's death had really been an accident. Later, the porter at Harry's apartment house tells Holly that there is no way that Harry could have been alive after being hit by the lorry, due to the way his neck was bent, and that three men had carried Lime across the street, not two, as Baron Kurtz had said. Holly tries to get the porter to tell his story to the police, but he refuses, becomes agitated, and asks Holly to leave. Holly walks Anna back to her apartment, where the police are searching her room. When they find a forged passport they leave, taking Anna with them. Holly speaks with the other witnesses, but learns nothing new. Anna and Holly arrive at the porter's apartment, only to find that he has been murdered. The crowd around the building suspects Holly and chases after him. Holly eludes capture and arrives at the book club meeting. There, he tries to field intellectual questions including whether he uses the stream of consciousness technique and who had influenced his work. He stammers out a few brief answers, satisfying no one. Virtually everyone in the audience walks out on his presentation. Martins flees when he notices two suspicious looking men at the back of the hall. He eventually meets up with Calloway. Major Calloway advises Holly to leave Vienna and, when Holly refuses, reveals the truth about Harry Lime's racket. Calloway says that Lime had stolen penicillin from military hospitals and then sold it in diluted form, and in the process killed or injured many people. Calloway takes Martins to a hospital and shows him children who had died of meningitis after receiving Lime's under-strength penicillin. Saddened, Holly promises to leave Vienna. But as he is leaving the hospital, a Russian officer comes in, asking for Anna's passport so that he may arrest her. Holly heads back to Anna's apartment, hoping to win her back, and confirms that she had been arrested by the Russian occupation police for having a forged passport, courtesy of Harry Lime. They suspect that she is Czech, not Austrian. Leaving her apartment, Holly hears Anna's cat meow, looks across the darkened square, and barely discerns a man in the doorway, the cat rubbing against his legs. A moment later, a woman across the street opens her window to yell at Holly, spilling light onto the man in the doorway. It is Harry Lime, alive and well. Lime runs off around the corner and disappears, prompting Holly to summon Calloway, who determines that Harry has escaped into the sewers via a kiosk. Calloway realizes that Lime has used the sewer tunnels to move about the city undetected. The police then exhume Harry's coffin where they find that another man, Joseph Harbin, has been buried in his place. (Harbin had been an orderly in a military hospital and was thought to have stolen the penicillin.) The next day, Holly meets with Harry on Vienna's celebrated Ferris Wheel. They talk and Harry offers to bring Holly in on his racket. In a famous scene, known as the cuckoo clock speech (see below), Lime points to dots (people) moving on the ground far below and asks Martins whether anyone would notice if one of the dots below them stopped moving, how much money would one of those dots be worth to him? Harry and Holly agree to meet in a café near the railway station to discuss what work Holly could do for his old friend. Holly goes to the arranged meeting place, but has plans to turn Harry over the police in exchange for amnesty (and a train ticket) for Anna. Anna stays behind, and when Harry shows up, the police chase him into the sewers. Lime is eventually cornered and he opens fire on Sgt. Paine, killing him. Harry is then shot by Major Calloway but he manages to drag himself up a staircase and up to a grating. Holly then takes Sgt. Paine's gun and shoots Lime. Holly attends Harry's second funeral. Afterwards, he waits in the road to speak with Anna, but she simply walks past him. Differences between releasesAs the original British release begins, an unnamed narrator (actually the voice of director Carol Reed) is heard describing post-war Vienna from the point of view of a racketeer. The version shown in American theatres replaced this with narration by Holly Martins. This change was made by David O. Selznick, who did not think American audiences would relate to the seedy tone of the original.[1] In addition, eleven minutes were cut.[2] Today, Reed's original version now appears on American DVDs and in showings on Turner Classic Movies (both the Criterion Collection and Studio Canal releases include a comparison of the two opening monologues.) Adaptation of the source materialBefore writing the screenplay, Greene worked out the atmosphere, characterization, and mood of the story by writing a novella. This was written purely to be used as a source text for the screenplay and was never intended to be read by the general public, although it was later published (alongside The Fallen Idol). The narrator in the novella is Major Calloway, a British military policeman, which gives the book a slightly different emphasis from that of the screenplay. A small portion of his narration is retained in a modified form at the very beginning of the film, the part in which (Reed's) voice-over declaims: "I never knew the old Vienna..." Other differences include the nationality of both Martins and Lime; they are English in the book. Martins' first name is Rollo rather than Holly. Popescu's character is an American called Cooler. The character of Crabbin was originally meant to be two characters to be played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, an established comedy duo in films. Perhaps the fundamental difference is the end of the novella, in which it is implied that Anna and Rollo (Holly) are about to begin a new life together, in stark contrast to the unmistakable snub by Anna that marks the end of the movie. Anna does walk away from Lime's grave in the book, but the text continues: "I watched him striding off on his overgrown legs after the girl. He caught her up and they walked side by side. I don't think he said a word to her: it was like the end of a story. He was a very bad shot and a very bad judge of character, but he had a way with Westerns (a trick of tension) and with girls (I wouldn't know what)". In some prints of the film, the last few seconds have been deleted to try to conceal the snub and manufacture the happy ending of the book.[citation needed] During the shooting of the film, the final scene was the subject of a dispute between Greene, who wanted the happy ending of the novella, and Selznick and Reed, who stubbornly refused to end the film on what they felt was an artificially happy note. This is one of the few areas where Reed and Selznick did not clash during the production.[citation needed] Production
The film was shot on location in Vienna with additional scenes shot in England. The tall and wide sewer shown in the film is in fact the tunnel of the Wien River (Vienna River), although many shots were also filmed in a London studio. After one day's shooting, Welles declined to film in the sewers and sets were built at Shepperton Studios to finish the film. There is a great deal of footage using doubles for Welles that were shot in the actual sewers.[citation needed] StyleThe atmospheric use of black and white expressionist cinematography (by Robert Krasker), with harsh lighting and distorted camera angles, is a key feature of The Third Man. Combined with the unique theme music, seedy locations, and acclaimed performances from the cast, the style evokes the atmosphere of an exhausted, cynical post-war Vienna at the start of the Cold War. The film's unusual camera angles, however, were not appreciated by all critics. C.A. Lejeune in The Observer described Reed's "habit of printing his scenes askew, with floors sloping at a diagonal and close-ups deliriously tilted" as "most distracting". Reputedly American director William Wyler, a close friend of Reed's, sent him a spirit level, with a note saying, "Carol, next time you make a picture, just put it on top of the camera, will you?".[citation needed] The film's expressionistic photography is reminiscent of the directorial style of Welles, who is sometimes erroneously credited with directing the film himself on this ground. In interviews with Peter Bogdanovich, Welles stated that outside of acting, his only contribution was the cuckoo clock speech.[3] ScoreThe distinctive musical score was composed by Anton Karas and played by him on the zither. Before the production came to Vienna, Karas was an unknown wine bar performer. Reed and Howard fell in love with Karas' zither music after hearing him play in a Viennese café. Karas agreed to record some of his compositions on a reel-to-reel tape machine that Reed set up in the bedroom of his hotel. "The Third Man Theme", was released as a single in 1950 (Decca in UK, London Records in USA). It became a best-seller and later an LP was released. The exposure made Karas an international star.[4] Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, "Has there ever been a film where the music more perfectly suited the action than in Carol Reed's 'The Third Man'?"[5] Anton Karas - Third Man Theme excerpt An excerpt from Anton Karas' The Third Man Theme
Problems listening to the file? See media help. The comedian Victor Borge later covered the theme on piano for his album Caught in the Act, and a version with a faster tempo and without the zither was featured on the album "Going Places" by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. The music is also used in a bar scene in the 2002 film Triple X. Cast
Joseph Cotten in the starring role of Holly Martins, writer of cheap novels and friend of Harry Lime.
Adaptations and spin-offsA radio drama series called The Lives of Harry Lime (original British title: The Adventures of Harry Lime), centring on the adventures of Harry Lime (voiced by Welles) prior to his "death in Vienna", comprising 52 episodes, was aired in 1951 and 1952. Welles wrote several of the episodes, including "Ticket to Tangiers," which is included on the Criterion Collection and Studio Canal releases of the film. In addition, recordings of the 1952 episodes "Man of Mystery", "Murder on the Riviera" and "Blackmail is a Nasty Word" are included on the Criterion Collection DVD The Complete Mr. Arkadin. A television series later used the film's title, theme music and the character name "Harry Lime", in which Lime was played by Michael Rennie. However, the Lime character was a wealthy art-dealer who behaved like Robin Hood, and had an associate called Bradford Webster (played by Jonathan Harris). The series was produced by the BBC and ran for 77 episodes between 1959 and 1965. It was syndicated in the United States.[6] In Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier, Harry Lime is revealed to be Bob Cherry, a British spy who (after his career as Lime) becomes the James Bond character "M". The Rob Grant novel Incompetence is a humorous re-imagining of The Third Man set in a future United Europe in which no individual can be fired for incompetence. The cuckoo clock speechIn a famous scene, looking down upon the people beneath from his vantage point on top of the Riesenrad, the large Ferris wheel in the Prater amusement park, Lime compares them to dots. Back on the ground, he makes the now famous remark:
Greene has conceded that this remark was not his own invention, but rather Welles' contribution to the script. Welles himself admitted that he was inspired to his speech by a much smaller and older quote that implied the same from a Hungarian play. The cuckoo clock is in fact a German invention, not Swiss. Copyright statusThis film lapsed into public domain in the United States when the copyright was not renewed after the death of producer David Selznick. In 1997, the film was restored to copyright in accordance to the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, and the Criterion Collection released a digitally restored DVD of the original British print of the film. See also
Notes and references
Further reading
External links Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
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