The Third Man was directed by Carol Reed in 1949 andis considered today as one of the true masterpieces of cinema'a classic era. Apart from the exellent plot and the notorious twist inside, it's also famous for the celebrated score by Anton Karas, a zither player who was living in the streets of Vienna and was discovered accintentally by Reed.
Third Man's Plot
Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotten), an American pulp fiction writer, arrives to Vienna hoping to find his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), when he learns about his death under indefinite circumstances. Subsequent to learning about his friend's death he begins an investigation into Lime's past and starts searching for the mysterious third man who appeared at his funeral.
The end of the Second World War saw many cities left in a confounded state of chaos as a result of the various cultural and political influences. One of these cities was Vienna, the setting for this film, which found itself having inherited four languages, four constitutions and four different cultures. The result of these influences and the ensuing poverty on this Babel-like society was the formation of two types of crooks; the amateurs and the professionals. Needless to say the latter always win the battle for survival.
The Key of Success
And so it is with great amusement that in this demoralized city arrives the saintly figure of Holly Martins – his first name surely a play on words. In accordance with his virtuous self he writes novels in which his lead characters fight crime but he is also prone to a measure of naivety as he believes Vienna to be heavenly. This is further supported by his response to the news of Harry’s death where the porter exclaims “he is in hell now” (pointing upwards) “or in heaven” (pointing down). Both the guilty and the persecutors find themselves wanting to rid of this vexatious character, who constantly manages to get in their way in his aim to clear Harry Lime’s name. And it is with delicious irony that this frivolous task results in Holly’s discovery of the real Harry. And so humor is artfully woven into the plot, an inevitable result of the collaboration of three Brits (Greene, Korda, Reed).
The film owes its popularity to this mélange of manhunts, conspiracies and corruption. Albeit the plot’s classic beginning sequence, things swiftly change and the plot takes a turn for the unorthodox, aided in part by the unusual and playful musical score. Reed follows Holly’s story step by step as he immerses himself deeper and deeper into a darker world, a hellish world and one to which the guilty will return. For the rest, hope lingers in the air during the now classic last scene which renders an otherwise Holly Martinesque plot into a work of art. Reed finds the perfect rhythm, Greene the most suitable cues and Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles weave these elements into one of the paramount classic features of cinema. With each viewing it’s brought back to life much like its hero.
Tasos Melemenidis - Watching and reading frantically about cinema as a teenager, had a major impact on my studies in IT. This was a negative impact as far as ...
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