The Third Man (1950)

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Graham Greene's contemporary variant on the Dracula legend is one of the most watchable films ever made. (Dracula? Think about it. Postwar Vienna, a whole city of crumbling towers and ruined splendors = Dracula's castle. And Dracula himself, a vampire brought back to life from "death", dressed all in black, who flees from the light and gorges himself on human blood, yet is a charming fellow withal: fluently fascinating, casually contemptuous, lightheartedly ruthless, cheerfully sinister. Even the second death does not kill his powers. Over Anna, for instance). Yes, this engrossing, masterfully designed thriller stands as my favorite suspense film. And the number one choice of a large number of other commentators too. Not to mention the general public. I think the reason for such universal acclaim is that the script operates so successfully on so many different levels. A thinking man's film, but the thinking nowhere gets in the way of the simple chase and suspense excitements, mounted against such an exotic background as postwar Vienna. In fact, the ordinary entertainment seeker who thrilled to the pursuit, the mystery, the intrigue, the twists and surprises, the terrors, the romance of the basic plot, would probably be surprised to learn there was anything more to the movie, aside from the facts that it was involvingly acted, atmospherically presented, and scored in an astonishingly novel yet gripping way with zither music. The acting is superlative too. Joseph Cotten has one of his best roles as the naïve, second-rate writer who blunders through the labyrinthine ways of a decaying city to find his alter ego-Orson Welles in a memorable performance that outshines even his Citizen Kane. Oddly, Alida Valli's moody, beautifully understated yet perfectly-in-tune portrayal of the girlfriend who knows more than she pretends, who expresses less than she feels, was not properly appreciated by contemporary critics. Perhaps we cannot blame them. It is only on a third or fourth viewing that the spectator can penetrate Anna's mind, can see through her devices, her little subterfuges, so that her absolute rejection of Martins in the film's famous final scene comes no longer as a surprise, but is the logical and only outcome of feelings and emotions she has subtly hinted at through voice and gesture right throughout the movie. However, the principals are not the only actors in The Third Man. It always amazes me that so many critics even today comment only on the well-known British and American stars. Everybody talks about the blundering, self-centered, morosely manipulative Cotten; the enigmatic, expressively introspective charm of Valli; the mercilessly unremorseful, light-hearted banter of Welles; the rough-and-ready cynical sincerity of straight-from-the-shoulder Howard; the admiring, quick-reflexed yet ideally subordinate Bernard Lee; the wonderfully diffuse bonhomie of Wilfrid Hyde-White. But few critics talk about the German-speaking players, particularly Ernst Deutsch (Baron Kurtz) with his sanpaku eyes and rubbery smile; or Erich Ponto (Dr Winkel), with his craggily carved features and his amusing insistence on the correct pronunciation of his surname; or the menacingly heavy-set Siegfried Breuer (Popescu); or the repentantly volatile Paul Hoerbiger (the porter). With the exception of Ernst Deutsch, who was mainly based in the theatre, these players enjoyed extraordinarily lengthy cinema careers. Karas' contrapuntal and atmospherically moody zither music, along with Krasker's sinisterly somber cinematography, perhaps deservedly receive most of the technical hurrahs from critics and public. A pity these praises sometimes overlook such features as Reed's painstakingly meticulous direction and Oswald Hafenrichter's fast-paced film editing that often cuts in time or tune with the zither beats on the soundtrack.

The movie is great. Perfect storyline, Perfect acting, Perfect dialogs and Perfect ending! the scene at the carousel is a masterpiece.

An example from the classic era of film noir. Director Carol Reed introduces us to post-war Vienna filled with harsh angles, Gothic shadows, lonely streets and gleaming streetlamps. Pulp novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives to the city looking for a job his good friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) has promised him. Immediately upon arrival he finds out that Lime has been run over by a car. Police think it a simple accident, but Martins has other ideas.Reed is a known expressionist and this shows heavily in the film. Dutch angles fill almost every shot and a lot of time is given for the buildup and the atmosphere of the city. And the film is to be praised for this. Many of the shots seem eerily familiar to the viewer. Not because you've seen the film but because so many later directors and cinematographers have been influenced by it. The shot of Lime's shadow looming against a wall as he slowly approaches is a fine, fine piece of film making and the most iconic the film has.Eerily familiar also describes the story to a tee, but in this case that is not a compliment. The plot is fairly easy to predict, despite of it containing some pretty clever twists. I can only imagine how revolutionary a film such as this one must have seemed like back on its day. But now, as someone who has watched so many other similar films... Well, it honestly makes the film something of a bore. I can appreciate it visually and the actors are extremely talented, but the story didn't leave me with much.And this is honestly the problem with a lot of mid-century films. At least for yours truly. There is something to be said about being one of the first to do something. But if that thing continues to be done better and better throughout the years, is it okay, at some point, to let the first examples go. Am I doing this film and others like it a disservice by not having seen them earlier when I would have been more able to appreciate them?Perhaps. Or perhaps history and time march on, like they always do. Nevertheless, it's a fine film. Very well made, very well acted. And the story is a good one. The fact that it has been made again so many times since then is a testament to that.

When this movie was released, there was a lot of classic noir. This film has the feel of the noir era only with bigger stars than films like The Narrow Margin for example. That is because we have Western script writers writing a film noir. It does work pretty well because of a talented cast. Orsen Welles plays Harry Lyme, a mysterious character who fakes his own death before Joseph Cotton (Holly Martin) arrives on the scene. It is then up to Martin to find out about Lymes life, yet he can not shake the feeling perhaps Lyme is not dead after all. There is a lot of support here that is very talented from Bernard Lee(see his support of 007 in Dr. No) to Trevor Howard (see Noel Cowards's Brief Encounter in 1945). Robert Brown, another Bond series regular, has an accredited role as a cop in the storm drain sequence.The storm drain chase at the end of this is the main highlight of the film. But prior to this, it is pretty much film noir. Carol Reed, the director of James Mason's Odd Man Out in 1947 seems to be the ideal director in this one. Reed gets a lot out of any cast, and that is not an exception here. His direction of this final chase of Lyme is nearly flawless.