The Third Man
The Third Man is a 1949 film noir directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene, and starring Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, Alida Valli as Anna Schmidt, Orson Welles as Harry Lime and Trevor Howard as Major Calloway. Set in post-World War II Allied-occupied Vienna, the film centres on American writer Holly Martins, who arrives in the city to accept a job with his friend Harry Lime, only to learn that he has died. Martins stays in Vienna to investigate Lime's death, becoming infatuated with Lime's girlfriend Anna Schmidt.
The use of black-and-white German expressionist-influenced cinematography by Robert Krasker, with its harsh lighting and Dutch angles, is a major feature of The Third Man. Combined with the use of ruined locations in Vienna, the style evokes exhaustion and cynicism at the start of the Cold War.
Greene wrote a novella as a treatment for the screenplay. Composer Anton Karas' title composition "The Third Man Theme" topped the international music charts in 1950, bringing international fame to the previously unknown performer. The Third Man is considered one of the greatest films of all time, celebrated for its acting, musical score, and atmospheric cinematography.
In 1999, the British Film Institute voted The Third Man the greatest British film of all time. In 2011, a poll for Time Out ranked it the second-best British film ever.
Plot
Holly Martins, an American author of Western pulp novels, arrives in the British sector of Allied-occupied Vienna seeking Harry Lime, a childhood friend who has offered him a job. However, Martins is told that Lime was killed by a car while crossing the street. At Lime's funeral, Martins meets two Royal Military Police officers, part of the ICPO: Sergeant Paine, a fan of Martins' novels, and Major Calloway. Afterward, Martins is asked to lecture at a book club a few days later. He then meets a friend of Lime's, "Baron" Kurtz, who tells Martins that he and another friend, Popescu, carried Lime to the side of the street after the accident, and that, before he died, Lime asked them to take care of Martins and Lime's girlfriend, actress Anna Schmidt.As Martins and Anna query Lime's death, they realise that accounts differ as to whether Lime was able to speak before his death, and how many men carried away the body. The porter at Lime's apartment tells them that he saw a third man helping. He offers to give Martins more information but is murdered before they can speak again; Martins and Anna flee the scene after a mob begins to suspect him of the murder. When Martins confronts Major Calloway and demands that Lime's death be investigated, Calloway reveals that Lime was stealing penicillin from military hospitals, diluting it, and then selling it on the black market, injuring or killing countless people. Martins agrees to drop his investigation and leave.
An inebriated Martins visits Anna and confesses his feelings for her. A man crosses the street towards her front door, but moves away after seeing Martins at the window. After leaving, Martins walks the streets until he notices Anna's cat and realises someone is watching from a darkened doorway. In a momentary flash of light, Martins sees that the man is Lime. Martins calls out, but Lime flees and vanishes. Martins summons Calloway, who realises that Lime has escaped through the city's sewers to the Soviet sector. The British police exhume Lime's coffin and discover that the body is that of a hospital orderly who had been assisting him. Anna, who is Czech, is to be sent to the Soviet sector after the British police discover that she has a forged Austrian passport, and is questioned again by Calloway.
Martins goes to Kurtz and asks to see Lime. Lime and Martins meet and talk as they ride the Wiener Riesenrad. Lime speaks cynically of the insignificance of his victims' lives and the personal gains to be earned from the city's chaos and deprivation. Martins realises that Lime sold Anna out to the Soviet authorities for his own benefit. Lime obliquely threatens Martins as now the only 'proof' that Lime is alive. Lime then offers Martins a chance to join in on his scheme before leaving quickly. Calloway asks Martins to help arrest Lime; he agrees provided that Calloway will arrange for Anna to leave Vienna rather than be handed over to the Soviets. The British authorities arrange for Anna to take a train to Paris, but she spots Martins, who has come to observe her departure, at the station. After persuading Martins to reveal the plan to capture Lime, she leaves in order to warn him. Exasperated, Martins decides to leave Vienna; on the way to the airport, Calloway stops at a hospital to show Martins children dying of meningitis who were treated with Lime's diluted penicillin, which convinces him to stay and assist in capturing Lime.
Lime arrives at a café in the international zone to meet Martins, but Anna is able to warn him that the police are closing in. He flees into the sewer, with the police following him underground. Lime shoots and kills Sgt Paine, but Calloway shoots and badly wounds Lime. Lime drags himself up a cast-iron stairway to a street grating but cannot lift it. Martins, armed with Paine's gun, runs after Lime finding him beneath the grating where they stare at each other. Calloway, realising Martins has chased Lime, shouts that Martins must not take any chances and shoot on sight. Lime nods his head slightly at Martins. Calloway follows down the tunnel as a single shot is heard.
Martins attends Lime's second funeral at the risk of missing his flight out of Vienna. He waits on the road to the cemetery to speak with Anna, but she walks past without glancing in his direction.
Cast
'''Uncredited'''Production
Before writing the screenplay, Graham Greene worked out the atmosphere, characterisation, and mood of the story by writing a novella as a film treatment. He never intended for it to be read by the general public, although it was later published under the same name as the film. The novella is narrated in the first person from Calloway's perspective. In 1948, Greene met Elizabeth Montagu in Vienna; she gave him tours of the city, its sewers, and some of its less reputable nightclubs. She also introduced Greene to Peter Smolka, the central European correspondent for The Times, who gave Greene stories about the black market in Vienna.During the shooting of the film, the final scene was the subject of a dispute between producer David O. Selznick and Reed. While Selznick preferred the hopeful ending of the novella, with Martins and Anna walking away arm-in-arm, Reed refused to end the film on what he felt was an artificially happy note. Greene later wrote: "One of the very few major disputes between Carol Reed and myself concerned the ending, and he has been proved triumphantly right." Selznick's contribution, according to himself, was mainly enlisting Cotten and Welles and producing the shortened US version.
Through the years there was occasional speculation that Welles was the de facto director of The Third Man rather than Reed. Jonathan Rosenbaum's 2007 book Discovering Orson Welles calls this a "popular misconception", although Rosenbaum did note that the film "began to echo the Wellesian theme of betrayed male friendship and certain related ideas from Citizen Kane." Rosenbaum writes that Welles "didn't direct anything in the picture; the basics of his shooting and editing style, its music and meaning, are plainly absent. Yet old myths die hard, and some viewers persist in believing otherwise." Welles himself fuelled this theory in a 1958 interview, in which he said he "entirely wrote the role" of the Harry Lime character and that he'd had an unspecified role in making the film—more than the contribution he made to Journey into Fear—but that it was a "delicate matter" he did not want to discuss because he wasn't the film's producer. However, in a 1967 interview with Peter Bogdanovich, Welles said that his involvement was minimal: "It was Carol's picture". Welles did contribute some of the film's best-known dialogue. Bogdanovich also stated in the introduction to the DVD:
However, I think it's important to note that the look of The Third Man—and, in fact, the whole film—would be unthinkable without Citizen Kane, The Stranger and The Lady from Shanghai, all of which Orson made in the '40s, and all of which preceded The Third Man. Carol Reed, I think, was definitely influenced by Orson Welles, the director, from the films he had made.
Principal photography
Six weeks of principal photography were shot on location in Vienna, ending on 11 December 1948. Some use was made of the Sievering Studios facilities in the city. Production then moved to Worton Hall Studios in Isleworth and Shepperton Studios in Surrey and was completed in March 1949. Thomas Riegler emphasises the opportunities for Cold War espionage that the Vienna locations made available, and notes that "the audio engineer Jack Davies noticed at least one mysterious person on the set."The scenes of Harry Lime in the sewer were shot on location or on sets built at Shepperton; most of the location shots used doubles for Welles. However, Reed claimed that, despite initial reluctance, Welles quickly became enthusiastic and stayed in Vienna to finish the film.
According to the 2015 recollection of assistant director Guy Hamilton, Greene and Reed worked very well together but Welles "generally annoyed everyone on the set". His temporary absence forced Hamilton to step in as a body double, and the filming of the sewer scenes was moved to studios in the UK as a result of Welles' complaints about shooting in the actual sewers.
Reed had four different camera units shooting around Vienna for the duration of the production. He worked around the clock, using Benzedrine to stay awake.