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The Third Man 1949, Great Britain, B & W, 104 min.
DVD Features
* Video Introduction by Peter Bogdanovich
* Abridged recording of Graham Greene’s treatment
* Radio spots of The Third Man, written and performed by Welles
* Alternate U.S. opening with Joseph Cotton’s voice-over
* Archival footage of composer Anton Karas, and the film’s sewer locations
* Original and re-release theatrical trailers
* Restoration demonstration
* Production stills
If you are a fan of Sir Carol Reed’s post-war British noir classic The Third Man, throw away your old, scratchy, faded public domain video copies and rush to buy the recent Criterion DVD release. You will hardly recognize the film. Post-war divided Vienna, canted, desolate, and cavernous, never looked so romantic. To bring home the point, the Criterion DVD includes before and after demonstrations of their digital restoration.
The Third Man is a gripping, political noir thriller set in a post-war Vienna divided into four allied-governed sections (France, Russia, Britain, America). Though the political context is used mainly as an atmospheric backdrop, it does shade the film’s characterisations, and is a fairly accurate depiction of the international intrigue surrounding postwar Vienna. However, Graham Greene’s original story downplayed the political side, as he envisioned the story as merely an entertaining potboiler without subtext.
An American writer of pulp western novels, Holly Martins, arrives in Vienna on a work offer from an old school friend Harry Lime. Once there he learns that Lime was killed in a car accident. Unconvinced by official accounts, he remains in Vienna to explore the strange circumstances behind Lime’s death. In the film’s first hour Martins meets with the principal characters surrounding the intrigue, including Lime’s Czechoslovakian girlfriend Anna Schmidt, several eye-witnesses, and police major Calloway (a narrative element reminiscent of Citizen Kane). At first skeptical, he slowly comes to accept the harsh truth of Harry Lime as a ruthless black marketer involved in the underground trafficking of stolen, diluted penicillin (that caused the death of many sick children). Sixty-five minutes into the film, the “dead” Harry Lime makes a dramatic appearance, literally stepping out of Vienna’s shadowy darkness. In his relatively short screen time, Welles, who wrote most of his own dialogue, leaves a lasting impression of seductive...