The Third Man - Directed by Carol Reed 1949 Cinematography by Robert Krasker with Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli - The Third Man (1949) is a visually-stylish thriller - a paranoid story of social, economic, and moral corruption in a depressed, rotting and crumbling, 20th century Vienna following World War II. The striking film-noirish, shadowy thriller was filmed expressionistically within the decadent, shattered and poisoned city that has been sector-divided along geo-political lines.
The black and white, pessimistic film is one of the greatest British thrillers of the post-war era, in the best Alfred Hitchcock tradition, and beautifully produced and directed by Britisher Carol Reed. It was voted the #1 British Film of the 20th Century by the esteemed British Film Institute (BFI). It was co-produced by Hungarian-born Alexander Korda and American movie mogul David O. Selznick. Because Korda gave American distribution rights to Selznick (who cut eleven minutes from the original British version), the credits of the US version include Selznick references.
This was Reed's second collaboration with British screenwriter Graham Greene (after The Fallen Idol (1948)) - a clever and original mystery tale simply evoked by one sentence written by Greene: "I saw a man walking down the Strand, whose funeral I had only recently attended." It told of a love triangle with nightmarish suspense, treachery, betrayal, guilt and disillusionment. Its two most famous sequences include the Ferris-wheel showdown high atop a deserted fairground with the famous cuckoo clock speech (written by Orson Welles), and the climactic chase through the underground network of sewers beneath the cobblestone streets. And the film once again teamed co-stars Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles of Citizen Kane (1941), in a tale of a foolishly-romantic, wimpy American writer (Holly Martins) of pulp westerns in occupied, post-WWII Vienna who tries to understand (and then decipher) the mysterious disappearance - vehicular accidental death and burial of an old school friend (Harry Lime) - who, unbeknownst to him, had become an exploitative, morally corrupt, and chilling black-market drug dealer and racketeer (of diluted penicillin), working out of the Russian zone. [From 1951-52, Welles starred in a spin-off radio show titled The Lives of Harry Lime, a syndicated 52 episode series based on the adventures of his character in this film - Joseph Cotten delivered the narration in the American release, delivering his own story = I never knew the old Vienna before the war, with its Strauss music, its glamour and [its] easy charm - Constantinople suited me better. I really got to know it in the classic period of the Black Market. [Boots, stockings, cigarettes, and watches exchange hands.] [They could get anything if people wanted it enough and had the money to pay.] We'd run anything, if people wanted it enough- mmm - had the money to pay. Of course, a [the] situation like that does tempt amateurs, but [of course, they don't last long, not really, not like professionals] you know they can't stay the course like a professional. [A view of a dead body floating in an icy river.] Now the city - [A sign announces: "ENTERING THE AMERICAN ZONE."] it's [is] divided into four zones, you know, each occupied by a power - [Views of signs of the British, Russian, and French zones.] the American, the British, the Russian, and the French. But the center of the city - that's international, policed by an International Patrol, [A view of guard's duty being changed.] one member of each of the four powers. Wonderful. [You can imagine what a chance they had], What a hope they had, all of them strangers to the place and none [no two] of them could speak [speaking] the same language, except a sort of smattering of German. [Four guards in a jeep each represent their nationalities.] [Oh, they were] Good fellows on the whole, did their best, you know. [Views of bombed-out sites around Vienna.] Vienna doesn't really look any worse than a lot of other European cities, bombed about a bit [a little, of course]. [Views of soldiers on guard, and then standing on parade and marching in a square.] Oh, I was gonna tell you, wait, I was gonna tell you about Holly Martins, an American. Came all the way here to visit a friend of his. The name is Lime, Harry Lime. Now Martins was broke and Lime had offered him some sort - I don't know - some sort of a job. Anyway, there he was, poor chap, happy as a lark and without a cent. [Anyway, I was dead broke when I got to Vienna. A close pal of mine had wired me, offering me a job doing publicity work for some kind of charity he was running. I'm a writer, name's Martins, Holly Martins. Anyway, down I came, all the way to old Vienna, happy as a lark and without a dime. by Tim Dirks

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