The Third Man
Short description
In the years after the Second World War, Vienna is split into four occupation zones, its centre run jointly by the Allied powers and its streets crowded with black-market dealings. Holly Martins, an American who writes cheap Western novels, arrives in the city hoping that his old friend Harry Lime has work for him. Instead he learns that Lime has just been killed in a road accident and is being buried that same day. Major Calloway, a British officer, tells him plainly that Lime was a racketeer, which Martins refuses to accept. He begins asking questions about the circumstances of the death, meets Lime's grieving lover Anna Schmidt, and becomes convinced that his friend was murdered and that a mysterious third witness was present.
Carol Reed directed the film, working from a screenplay by Graham Greene. It followed Reed's The Fallen Idol the previous year and came before Trapeze, The Agony and the Ecstasy and Oliver! in his filmography. Joseph Cotten plays Martins, Alida Valli plays Anna, Trevor Howard plays Calloway and Orson Welles plays Harry Lime, among a credited cast of twenty-seven. Alexander Korda, David O. Selznick and Reed produced.
The film met with considerable approval: on IMDb it holds 8.1 out of 10 from over 178,000 votes and on TMDB 7.9 from more than two thousand. A critics' rating of 9.4 from ninety-three reviews is markedly higher than those audience scores. Its worldwide box office stands at about one million dollars.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film is based on the novel of the same name by Graham Greene.
- Orson Welles refused to film in the sewer tunnel. In the scene where (allegedly) Welles' character grabs onto the sewer grate, the director, Carol Reed, filmed it himself.
- Wells had a choice – to receive a fixed payment for filming or a percentage of the profits. Wells chose a fixed payment and lost out badly.
- At the traditional Viennese cinema “Burgkino” on the Ringstrasse, “The Third Man” is still shown three times a week: on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.
- Filming in Vienna took place from October 22 to December 11, 1948.
- The actors wearing military uniforms in the film actually wore brightly colored costumes to stand out as much as possible from real soldiers. The difference was smoothed over by the black-and-white film.
- Despite its British origins, "The Third Man" is considered one of the classic films noir and was even recognized by the American Film Institute as "one of the greatest American detective stories" in history. The protagonist finds himself in the role of a private detective and, in the course of the investigation, not only becomes convinced of the relativity of generally accepted opinions and moral guidelines, but also finds himself in a situation where he is forced to choose between feeling and duty.
- 11 minutes were cut from the film for its American release, including the introduction in which the narrator (Carol Reed) explained to viewers what life was like in an occupied city and what it was like to make a living on the black market. This segment was restored in the DVD release.
- There are currently several tour operators in Vienna offering tourists “The Third Man” location tours. — However, these should not be confused with a department of the Vienna magistrate responsible for the city’s sewer system, whose slogan is also “In the footsteps of the Third Man”.
- In 1999, the British Film Institute named "The Third Man" the best British film of all time.
- Anton Carras, the author and performer of the main musical theme, played it on a zither.
- The prototype for Harry Lime in Greene’s novella is Kim Philby, at that time still a respectable agent of Her Majesty and a mentor to Graham Greene. The name of Harry Lime itself is a calque of Graham Greene’s name.
- During filming, the "Mozart" café – where the meeting between Martens and Baron Kurtz was supposed to take place – refused to be used as a set, fearing losses, so the meeting scene was filmed on a nearby square, simply setting up tables there. Currently, the "Mozart" café actively promotes itself as one of the locations of "The Third Man".
- In Greene's original screenplay, the story is narrated by a British policeman (Major Calloway); the film presents the same events from the perspective of Holly Martins.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
