The Third Man at 75

As a thirteen-Twelve months-extinct in 1949, I went to the films each week—my local movie condo used to be correct three blocks from my dwelling and a cost value fifteen cents. My favourite movies were typical of a teen: Abbott and Costello comedies, westerns, and gangster movies. But, as a budding cinephile, one movie resonated with me as no different: The Third Man. The day I observed it I sat via two showings, I used to be so taken by the memoir and the performing.

This Twelve months marks the seventy fifth anniversary of The Third Mana movie that is considered as England’s greatest cinematic masterpiece in accordance with The British Movie Institute. In a trend, it is England’s Citizen Kane.

The movie used to be the work of two of England’s most talented artists: the novelist Graham Greene and the director Carol Reed. They had collaborated the Twelve months sooner than, turning a typical Greene account of inaccurate identity and betrayal, the short memoir “The Basement Room,” into The Fallen Idolwhich supplied the English actor Ralph Richardson with one of many few movies that tapped his expertise. (He bought an Academy Award nomination for his turn in it.) Reed also had colossal success lawful after the war alongside with his grim memoir of an Irish revolutionary on the flee, Uncommon Man Outwhereby he bought a ideal performance from James Mason. Take care of “The Third Man,” one of many valid stars of the movie used to be a metropolis, this time a grim, grey Belfast.

Reed and Greene had been talking a number of dispute up to their success with” The Fallen Idol” but had produced nothing. Then, while on trip back and forth in Italy, Greene began outlining one more memoir of betrayal towards the background of the upheaval that swept submit war Europe. Sir Alexander Korda, the British filmmaker, cherished the premise of one more Reed-Greene collaboration and agreed to finance the movie with the backing of the American producer David O. Selznick.

The memoir’s idea used to be to focal point the movie on the black market that flourished in submit-war Europe. Instead of a screenplay, Greene wrote the memoir as a up to date which he printed following the success of the movie. The realm had a down on his ideal fortune minor creator traveling to Vienna to rob a job with a chum, most efficient to search out out the most challenging friend used to be needless. No longer convinced of the indispensable ingredients of his ideal friend’s loss of life, he sets out to unearth the real fact, which offers Greene and Reed an replacement to undertake one more memoir of deceit and betrayal.

Selznick steered Prague because the metropolis to focal point on, but Reed most smartly-most in trend Vienna—it had a submit-war seediness about it along with to higher historical significance. Furthermore, unlike Prague, it had been bombed unhurried in the war with the central condo of its greatest architectural areas onerous hit, something Reed believed would give the movie an air of authenticity.

Greene regarded the account as one more one of his “entertainments,” tales like This Gun For Hire or Brighton Rock which he did now not rob severely and which he damaged-correct down to rob funds for additional serious literary projects. A case might well per chance well even furthermore be made that his “entertainments” prolong greater than novels like A Burnt-Out Case or The Comediansworks that were serious but tiring.

While the background filming used to be conducted in Vienna, Reed and Greene went to Hollywood to bear up the important thing capabilities with actors that Selznick managed. A series of four unhurried night conferences with him left Greene and Reed exhausted but with many of the movie’s indispensable ingredients worked out and receive entry to to a few actors below their alter. For the phase of the creator, Selznick steered Cary Grant, but he used to be now not . Joseph Cotten, who used to be below contract to him, used to be then signed to the phase. Greene’s name for the character, Rollo Martins, used to be changed to Holly due to Selznick design “Rollo” had a joyful sound to it. For the phase of the important thing girl in the memoir, Harry Lime’s mistress, Anna, Selznick lent them Alida Valli, who used to be below contract to him and had made a predominant impact because the voluptuous different girl in his flop of the old Twelve months, The Paradine Case. Greene and Reed believed she might well per chance well well be splendid.

There used to be a serious argument about who would play the phase of Harry Lime, the so-called “Third Man,” whose role in the screenplay might well per chance well well be runt but would again as a catalyst for the movie. Selznick’s replacement used to be abnormal—Noel Coward—but Greene and Reed already had their replacement. They wanted Orson Welles for the rationale that script they had developed gave him a compulsory role—the villain that everyone identifies with and the person that offers the memoir its great impact. The actual fact that Lime’s character had a lover met with Coward’s overt flamboyance, allowing Reed and Graham to prevail over Selznick’s suggestion.

Signing Welles did now not repeat that sophisticated. He used to be in Italy making a movie of Othello and, as accepted, used to be short of money. They supplied him $100,000, or 20% of the movie’s earnings, for right a handful of scenes. Ever the bad businessman, Welles took the money. Infected by the movie made £280,000 in its preliminary commence and over £1.4 million since, it used to be a bad replacement.

For the English militia policeman who leads Martins to the real fact of Lime’s criminal profession promoting watered-down penicillin, Reed signed Trevor Howard, who used to be coming off a predominant hit in the 1946 movie Transient Come at some stage in. The remainder of the solid used to be supplied with a better sense of authenticity by including a number of smartly-known Austrian actors.

Selznick jumpy that the movie used to be too English and would now not procure an viewers in America. He wanted a better American presence in the movie, emphasizing the role Americans conducted in Vienna, which used to be divided into four Allied zones. Reed and Greene mentioned they would rob into narrative the premise and did replace the 2 leads from Brits to Americans, which pleased Selznick’s concerns.

Selznick did notify on one point. He wanted the movie to commence with a top level design of Vienna and its most in trend grief to location the stage for the memoir. Greene wrote it and Joseph Cotten read it as his character Holly arrived in Vienna. It worked effectively and did location the scene.

Greene’s screenplay captured Vienna’s bleakness amidst the rubble from the bombing in the last days of the war. By a stroke of ideal fortune, preliminary filming had been performed in the chilly climate and Vienna seemed sad with snow piles, grey, and dirty, aloof now not cleaned up.

Reed’s route used to be splendid, with the memoir sharp from one unforgettable scene to one more. On the opposite hand, two of the most infamous scenes were Greene’s handiwork. Essentially the most memorable used to be the unexpected appearance of the supposedly needless Harry Lime. After visiting Lime’s condominium, Holly leaves and watches a cat—Harry’s cat finally—flee alongside the avenue to a darkened doorway where it performs with the sneakers of a hidden opt. Holly believes it’s a policeman following him on the orders of Significant Calloway and yells out. At that point, a window opens and shines a delicate-weight on the person in the doorway. It’s far Lime.

Here, one more star of the movie emerges: the zither-taking half in of a Viennese artist, Anton Karas. Reed had found him, and, while seeking a musical background for the movie after rejecting any Strauss waltzes as a cliché, stumble on the premise of the zither, a Viennese standard instrument, to receive a musical atmosphere. It turned out to work brilliantly and, in the midst of, made Karas a celeb. Certainly, “The Third Man Theme” changed into a quantity one hit in England and America.

Essentially the most infamous scene in the movie occurs on a Ferris Wheel in the Prater, Vienna’s leisure heart. Martin and Lime meet, and Martin confronts him referring to the deaths his penicillin racket is inflicting. Lime dismisses his concerns, noting that no one would omit those who died: “They were greater off.” Welles rewrote Greene’s parting strains for Lime and in the midst of produced the most memorable 2d in the movie. Bidding goodbye to Martins, Lime notes: “In Italy, for 30 years below the Borgias, they had warfare, dread, assassinate, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly admire, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that create? The cuckoo clock.”

Greene admitted that Welles’s model used to be greater than his; they were the most challenging strains in the movie, and he integrated them in the text of his contemporary model of the movie printed in 1950.

Overjoyed of Lime’s contaminated in spreading the watered-down penicillin, Martins is of the same opinion to present him over to the police in return for offering Anna papers to dwell in Vienna. A lure is location, and Lime tries to fly from the pursuing police via the sewers of Vienna. Cornered and gleaming his destiny, he begs Martins to shoot him, offering the movie the accomplish of betrayal that so many of Greene’s tales featured.

The ending introduced about a dispute between Greene and Reed. Greene wanted Martins and Anna to bound off from Lime’s grave collectively, arguing that the grim memoir wished a pleased ending. Reed fully refused, arguing that went towards the full theme of the movie, betrayal. Greene later admitted that Reed used to be right.

The Third Man used to be a huge success. It now not most efficient used to be the quantity one box location of commercial hit in Britain, earning over £280,000, but it absolutely did effectively in America as effectively. It used to be nominated for three Academy Awards, winning correct for loads of effective black and white cinematography. Reed did safe the Palme d’Or on the Cannes Movie Festival. He would eventually snatch an Academy Award for directing the musical Oliver!arguably one of many worst movies to safe that honor. In a obvious sense, The Third Man used to be the height of his profession. Nor did Greene ever again approximate the success of his screenplay for The Third Man.