The Third Man (1949)
Grade: 96
"The Third Man" is one of the best films of the 1940s. It is an outstanding film, with a script so dense that its quality cannot be fully appreciated with a single viewing. The quirky score, featuring a zither, puts a light touch on what would otherwise be a very tense film. The cast is first-rate, and there is some fine cinematography of Vienna's bombed out buildings and underground sewers.
Joseph Cotten stars as potboiler author Holly Martins, who has come to Austria to work for old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles). Postwar Austria is politically divided into sectors controlled by the U.S., England, France and Russia. A black market thrives, and there is much political intrigue. Upon arrival, Cotten learns that Lime has died in a suspicious car accident... was it murder? Lime left behind other loose ends: he was wanted on multiple counts of murder for profiteering from diluted penicillin. Cotten also falls for Lime's devoted girlfriend, lovely but unhappy Alida Valli.
"The Third Man" isn't exactly a forgotten classic, but it still has not received its due recognition. This may be because it was a British production, and filmed on location in Austria. The film is also in need of preservation: the sound quality was low on the print that I saw. Which is a shame, since every word of the dialogue deserves to be heard.
There are two versions of the film. The British print is 104 minutes. Producer David O. Selznick carefully pruned 11 minutes for the American version, replacing the opening narration by director Carol Reed with that of Joseph Cotten.
kollers@mpsi.net http://members.tripod.com/~Brian_Koller/movies.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews