Third Man, The Review

In post war-Cold War 1949, Austria`s capital, Vienna, was a divided city; like Berlin, the different zones were administered by the conquering powers - America, Britain, France and Russia. It was a hotbed of intrigue, black marketeering, spying. Enter Holly Martins, (Joseph Cotten), a writer of paperback westerns - Holly`s looking for his old friend Harry Lime and is told he`s been killed in a car accident. British police officer Calloway, (Trevor Howard), tells Martins that Lime was a racketeer; Lime`s girlfriend, Anna, (Alida Valli), claims the death may not have been an accident - there was a mysterious third man at the scene - Harry Lime, it seems, isn`t dead after all... Recently voted the best British film of all time, The Third Man is a wonderfully rich and ironic thriller which perfectly captured the mood of the time it was made. It`s almost as much as American film as a British one: the writer, Graham Greene, and the director, Carol Reed, were certainly British, but the film was a co-production between Alexander Korda`s London films and David O. Selznick`s company, and the principal stars, Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, are American, trailing behind them their past in Citizen Kane. In a wonderful article in the current edition of the American magazine Film Comment, Harlan Kennedy persuasively explores the many links between The Third Man and Touch of Evil, the film Welles directed 9 years later. Welles has a tiny role in The Third Man - only a couple of scenes towards the end of the film - but his presence dominates everything that occurs - the entire film is devoted to examinations of the world of Harry Lime. The location filming in divided Vienna (wonderful photography from Australian Robert Krasker) and the inspired use of zither music by Anton Karas ensure that this wonderful, complex thriller is as exciting today as ever it was.