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The Third Man



''The Third Man'' (1949) is a film noir directed by Carol Reed. The screenplay was written by novelist Graham Greene (writer). ==Plot== ===Overview=== The story is set in a bomb-damaged Vienna just after the World War II and is told from the point of view of a mildly successful pulp author, Holly Martins, who is searching for his friend Harry Lime. ===Synopsis=== At the beginning of the film, Martins discovers that his old friend Harry Lime, whom he had not seen in several years, has died under mysterious circumstances just prior to Martins' arrival in Vienna. He finds that there was more to Lime than he knew and that he was accused of being a black-market racketeer, trafficking in poor quality penicillin. Martins is told that Lime was struck by a truck while crossing a street. On several accounts, two of Lime's friends carried Lime's body off the street after the accident. All eyewitnesses to the accident happen to be friends or associates of Lime. Martins' investigation leads to another eyewitness not associated with Lime who claims that there was a ''third'' man who helped carry Lime's body. It is this "third man", Joseph Harbin, that the title of the film (which is essentially an elaborate MacGuffin) refers to. It is a common misconception that Harry Lime himself is the "third man". ===Alternate version=== The US version of ''The Third Man'' emphasises Martins' point of view much more strongly than the cut that was shown in British cinemas. This probably served to reduce the strongly anti-American tone of the original. Most noticeably, the opening monologue, spoken by Reed himself in the original, was re-recorded by Joseph Cotten. ===Adaptation of the source material=== Before writing the screenplay, Greene worked out the atmosphere, characterisation and mood of the story by writing a novella. This was written purely to be used as a source text for the screenplay and was never intended to be read by the general public, although Penguin Books later published it. The narrator in the novella is Calloway, which gives the book a slightly different emphasis from the screenplay. A small portion of his narration (given to Martins in the American release, and to an unidentified, unseen and never-returned-to character voiced by Carol Reed in the British release) is retained in a modified form at the very beginning of the movie, the part in which a voiceover declaims: "I never knew the old Vienna..." Other differences include the nationality of both Martins and Lime (they are England in the book. Martins' first name is Rollo rather than Holly. Popescu's character is an American called Cooler. Perhaps the most fundamental difference is the end of the novella, in which it is implied that Anna and Rollo/Holly are about to begin a new life together, in stark contrast to the unmistakable snub that makes the end of the movie so memorable. Anna does walk away from Lime's grave in the book, but the text continues: "I watched him striding off on his overgrown legs after the girl. He caught her up and they walked side by side. I don't think he said a word to her: it was like the end of a story. He was a very bad shot and a very bad judge of character, but he had a way with Westerns (a trick of tension) and with girls (I wouldn't know what)." ==Style== The atmospheric use of black and white cinematography (by Robert Krasker), harsh stage lighting, distorted camera angles, combined with the unique musical theme and excellent performances from the cast, all serve to convey the atmosphere of post-War Vienna, creating the tension inherent in the story, and making this one of Reed's best-loved films. The distinctive musical score was composed and played on the zither by Anton Karas (19061985). A single, ''The Third Man Theme'', released in 1950 (Decca in UK, London Records in USA) became a bestseller, and later an vinyl record was released. ==Cast== *Orson Welles as Harry Lime *Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins *Alida Valli as Anna Schmidt *Trevor Howard as Major Calloway *Wilfrid Hyde-White as Crabbin *Bernard Lee as Sgt. Paine *Erich Ponto as Dr. Winkel *Ernst Deutsch as Kurtz *Siegfried Breuer as Popescu ==Awards== The film won the 1949 ''Palme d'Or'' (Golden Palm) at the Cannes Film Festival, a British Academy Award for Best Film, and an Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 1950. The film was also voted the best list of British films of all time by the British Film Institute, and in public opinion polls is consistently placed in the top ten British films of all time. In 1999 it came first in a BFI Top 100 British films of British films, while in 2004 the magazine ''Total Film'' named it the third greatest British film. ==Adaptations and spin-offs== *A radio drama series called ''The Third Man'' and centring on the adventures of Harry Lime (voiced by Welles) prior to his "death in Vienna" ran for a number of seasons. *A television series was later created out of the film, with Michael Rennie starring as Harry Lime. ==Quote== Looking down upon the people beneath from his vantage point on top of the Riesenrad, the large Ferris wheel in the Leopoldstadt, Vienna amusement park, Lime compares them to ants. Back on the ground, he makes the now famous remark:
"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
Greene has confessed that this remark was not his own invention, but rather Welles' contribution to the script. (The impact of Lime's statement is in some ways enhanced by the fact that the cuckoo clock is in fact a Germany invention, and the Swiss do not even have that to their credit.) ==Other alterations to the script== As well as Welles' contributions, there were other significant changes between Greene's screenplay and the film. The character of Crabbin was originally meant to be two characters, to be played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, who were an established comedy duet in films. ==Common misconceptions== *Many people erroneously believe that Orson Welles directed the film himself. This is due in part to the greater fame of Welles, and also to the fact that the film's photography is heavily influenced by Welles's style. *Although it can be said that because Joseph Harbin was actually the one that was hit by the truck, and Harry Lime apparently helped carry Harbin away, perhaps it is not entirely unreasonable to refer to Harry as the "Third Man." ==External link== * 1949 films AFI 100 Movies AFI 100 Thrills British films Palme d'Or winners Radio programs Films noir

The Third Man



==The Novella== I have to dispute the opening paragraph. Graham Greene wrote the novella (it's not a novel) "The Third Man" first, not the screenplay. He did this to help him establish atmosphere and tone, since he found that the format of the screenplay didn't establish these very effectively. Then he wrote the screenplay based on the novella. The novella was not intended for publication, but it was subsequently published, with a preface by the author explaining how he came to write the novella. I've read the novella, and it differs in many important respects from the film. The main character is called Rollo, not Holly, and he and Harry Lime are English. Calloway is the narrator, which gives it a different emphasis from the film. The ending is completely different and far more conventional than the much superior end of the film. == I seen the page has been revamped since I wrote the note above, but it still claims that Greene later wrote a novel based on the screenplay. This is flat-out wrong. I may edit the page if this remains. See this site: http://www.filmforum.com/making3rdman.html Especially this part: >> The Novella In his preface to the The Third Man novella (in print from Penguin Books since 1949), Graham Greene wrote, "My film story, The Third Man, was never written to be read but only to be seen... For me it is impossible to write a film play without first writing a story. A film depends on more than plot; it depends on a certain measure of characterization, on mood and atmosphere, and these seem impossible to capture for the first time in the dull shorthand of a conventional treatment. I must have the sense of more material than I need to draw on (though the full-length novel usually contains too much). The Third Man, therefore, though never intended for publication, had to start as a story rather than as a treatment before I began working on what seemed the interminable transformations from one screenplay to another." << It is the story treatment (the novella) that was turned into the screenplay. It was never revised to incorporate the amendments that occurred during its transformation into a screenplay. :I made some changes recently and merely tried to preserve the information the was previously there. If there were mistakes here a week ago, they're still present now. Since you have specific information you can contribute, you should go ahead and edit the article itself. --User:MarkSweep 12:18, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC) :Fair enough. Will do, thanks! == Proposed rewrite == I'm proposing to rewrite/amplify the 'Third Man' article substantially. I believe there are more useful details to be included about the writing, direction and production of the film. I am a bit doubtful about the initial description as a 'film noir', although it may fit into this broad category, I suggest moving this description to later in the article. Similarly, Holly Martins was a writer of 'western' fiction - not 'pulp', as I would understand it. I'll also write short filmographies of Alida Valli and Wilfred Hyde-White and link to those - as well as Anton Karas. Any comments or suggestions, please get in touch on my User_talk:Agendum page. User:Agendum | User talk:Agendum 15:27, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC) :Please, go right ahead and make whatever changes you think are necessary. Thanks for mentioning it here first; however, as the article is not about a controversial topic and there are no disputes going on, this is not strictly necessary. Just WP:BB! :Regarding film noir, I think the film fits quite well into that fuzzy category: the cinematography is about as "noir" as it gets, but the plot elements are also there: uninvolved outsider gets gradually and reluctantly drawn into an existing conflict; at one point the protagonist is accused of a crime he didn't commit; and you can check off almost all of the themes and clichs listed in the film noir article: murder/crime, infidelity, jealousy, corruption, betrayal, hopeless fatalism; disillusioned males and a femme fatale; people trapped in a situation they did not want; etc. :Re "Western" vs. "pulp": it's not necessarily a contradiction, as Martins seems to write the kinds of Westerns that might be published in pulp magazines. See also Western fiction, which discusses this sort of connection. I agree that "Western" should be mentioned prominently when describing Martins' occupation as a writer. --User:MarkSweep 19:19, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC) ==Who is The Third Man?== I have to dispute the statement under "common misconceptions" that it was actually Harbin who was The Third Man - as I (and almost everyone else, I believe) saw it, Lime was indeed the Third Man. The Three Men in question were those who carried the body off the road - this body was not Lime's, it was Harbin's, therefore he could not have been one of the three. Presumably, Kurtz, Popescu, Harbin and Lime were all together, and Lime pushed Harbin in front of the car. The three of them then moved the body, and Lime then made himself scarce, and WInkel shows up seconds afterwards to formally identify the body as Lime. I'm prepared to admit I'm wrong, but it seems so likely that I have trouble believing that Lime was uninjured by the car, and thatHarbin was still alive at the time, and only got murdered and buried in Harry's place later on. Normally, I might follow wiki procedure and just edit it myself, but as MarkSweep added that section, and has put so much effort into the page, I thought I'd challenge it here first. --User:MockTurtle 10:35, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC) :I'll have to watch it again to be sure, but here's what I remember happening. The superintendent (Hoerbiger) saw three men carry Lime's body off the street after the "accident", which he admits he didn't witness (in fact, there are no independent eyewitnesses, so it's not clear that anyone was injured at all). As far as the superintendent knows, Lime was fatally hurt in the accident and died soon after. He knew Lime personally and identified the body. So there is no doubt that in the scene that played out in front of the superintendent, Lime was the "victim" and Kurtz, Popescu plus a "third man" carried Lime off the street. The police also knew Lime, so presumably Winkel's role was to issue a false death certificate, not to falsely identify the body as Lime's. Also notice the uncertainty about the exact time of death. Even if that's not what happened and it was Harbin who go shoved into the street, was hit by the truck, and died, it's still the case that as far as Martins, the superintendent, and the viewer are concerned, at least initially, it was Lime who died and Harbin was the third person to help carry his body. I believe the scene when Martins talks to the superintendent is the first time the words "third man" are uttered in the entire movie, after which Martins begins to look for that third man. --User:MarkSweep 13:53, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC) :: I'll have to see it again too, so I can be clearer. However, I'd always assumed the superintendant was mistaken, that he hadn't seen the body was Lime for certain, but merely assumed that it must have been him after he heard Lime was dead. He was watching from some distance, after all, and his eyes probably weren't what they used to be. ::More importantly, if Harbin was the third man, why would the others pretend he wasn't on the scene? He was known as an associate of Lime, and had not been seen for a while either way, so I don't think it would have made it any more suspicious if the authorities knew he was there. --User:MockTurtle 18:18, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC) :I was a bit nonplussed by that statement to the effect that Harry Lime was not the third man, but I wasn't sure about it. So I went to the cinema and saw the film (one of the advantages of living in Vienna!), and I've since read the book. It is clearly implied (although never stated outright) that a third men helped to carry the body after the "accident", and since the body was not Harry's, and Kurtz and Popescu are the first and second men, Lime (perhaps pretending to be Harbin or someone else) must have been the third man who carried the body of Harbin, (but which was claimed to be Lime's). The witness didn't see any faces, but was told (wrongly) by others that Harry Lime had died, and so he reasonably assumed that the body he saw was Harry's. He did, however, see the right number of people. Martins then seeks the third man, and is naturally surprised when he discovers it to have been Harry Lime himself. One could interpret it as "the third man apart from Harry and the driver who was present at the accident", in which case it would refer to Harbin, but that seems an unlikely interpretation to me. --User:Stemonitis 11:37, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::Having also seen the film recently, its clear that Lime is the the third man and that its Harbin's body. True, the film makes the viewer work this out for themselves rather than have one of the characters explicitly say so. But if he wasn't then the plot simply doesn't make sense. Besides, I can't believe Greene, a writer who clearly cared about plot, would double-bluff an audience and leave them deliberatly confused in this way. User:Jihg 17:08, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)


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