The Third Man

Released: September 1, 1949

Studio: British Lion Film Corporation (UK), Selznick (US)

Genre: mystery/film noir

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 1.07 Worldwide: 1.52

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: ? Worldwide: ?

Directing: Carol Reed

Screenwriting: Graham Greene

Starring: Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard

Review:

The Third Man is “a bona fide British classic: rich on atmosphere, strong on suspense and blessed with quite wonderful performances.” ^BFI In “a true collaboration between director Carol Reed and screenwriter Graham Greene,” ^BFI the latter created “this cool, perfect adaptation” ^T98 of his own novel.

“Mercury Theatre collaborators Welles and Cotten play a chilling game of cat and mouse” ^A07 “set in corrupt and desperate post-WWII Vienna during the Cold War” ^FS in this tale “of a supposed dead man and the old friend who wants to get to the bottom of the mystery.” ^A07 Cotton is Holly Martins, an American pulp fiction writer who travels to Vienna for a job promised him by his friend, Harry Lime, “a black-market drug dealer of the sleaziest nature.” ^VD played by “a never-better Orson Welles.” ^RS Martins finds out Lime was supposedly killed in an accident. In his sleuthing to find the truth, he becomes infatuated with Lime’s girlfriend Anna Schmidt (Valli) and is “drawn into the decadent and corrupt world in which Lime existed.” ^BFI

“The rotting streets of postwar Vienna are a metaphor for the paranoia in this bleak film noir.” ^A07 It is “beautifully shot by cinematographer Robert Krasker.” ^BFI It is “so brilliantly black, it’s like a one-film negation of Victory in Europe.” ^ML It is “full of sequences that linger in the mind,” ^BFI such as “the dramatic scene atop a ferris wheel” ^FS an d“the underground sewer scene at the end of the film [which] is considered by some to be a masterpiece.” ^VD There’s also “the acclaimed zither rendition of ‘The Harry Lime Theme’ by Anton Karas helps to create a rare, haunting movie atmosphere.” ^BFI