The Third Man, 1949
Director: Carol Reed:
Script: Graham Greene
Cinematographer: Robert Krasker
Theme music composed and performed by Anton Karos
Holly Martins: Joseph Cotton
Harry Lime: Orson Wells
Calloway: Trevor Howard
Anna: Alida Valli
The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed, with a script by Graham Greene, won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1949. Robert Krasker’s gorgeous black-and-white cinematography was awarded an Oscar in 1950. The Third Man was selected by the British Film Institute as the best British film ever made.
The Third Man opens with a view of the rooftops and rubble of postwar Vienna, a city then divided into French, American, British and Russian zones. As the credits roll, Anton Karos’s zither plays an ironically upbeat melody that Martin Scorsese referred to in an interview as “…reflecting the madness and the desperation of that ruptured world.”
The zither continues, muted and more somber, as Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton), an American writer of Westerns who’s come to Vienna at the invitation of his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Wells), makes his way to Lime’s apartment. When he arrives, he learns from the landlord, who speaks a little English, that his friend died minutes earlier when he was run down by a truck in front of the apartment building.
Initially, there’s nothing to make Martins, or the audience, view Lime’s death as suspicious. That changes when a witness to the accident claims to be one of the two men who carried Lime’s body off the road. That claim is contradicted by the landlord, also a witness, who insists that three men were involved in removing the body.
Reed chose not to provide subtitles when German is spoken in the film, which puts the audience in the same position as Martins. Like him, we’re outsiders, satisfied that our war is over, failing to understand the suffering and the corruption festering in postwar Europe. That theme is underscored when Major Calloway, chief of police, (Trevor Howard) tells Martins to go home, that he doesn’t belong. “He was the best friend I ever had,” Martins says, referring to Lime. Calloway’s reply: “He was about the worst racketeer that ever made a dirty living in this city.”
With the help of Anna, Lime’s bereft girlfriend (Alida Valli), Martins begins his search for the third man and for the truth, a search that culminates in what may be one of the most memorable chase scenes in film history.
