The Third Man - Wikipedia. The Third Man is a 1. British film noir directed by Carol Reed and written by Graham Greene.
It stars Joseph Cotten, Valli (Alida Valli), Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard. The film takes place in post- World- War- II Vienna. It centres on Holly Martins, an American who is given a job in Vienna by his friend Harry Lime, but when Holly arrives in Vienna he gets the news that Lime is dead. Martins then meets with Lime's acquaintances in an attempt to investigate what he considers a suspicious death. The atmospheric use of black- and- white expressionistcinematography by Robert Krasker, with harsh lighting and distorted .
Combined with the iconic theme music, seedy locations and acclaimed performances from the cast, the style evokes the atmosphere of an exhausted, cynical, post- war Vienna at the start of the Cold War. Greene wrote the novella of the same name as preparation for the screenplay. Anton Karas wrote and performed the score, which featured only the zither.
The title music . It is considered one of the greatest films of all time, celebrated for its acting, musical score and atmospheric cinematography. These powers share the duties of law enforcement in the city. American pulp. Western writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) comes to the city seeking his childhood friend, Harry Lime, who has offered him a job. Upon arrival he discovers that Lime was killed just hours earlier by a speeding truck while crossing the street. Martins attends Lime's funeral, where he meets two British Army Police: Sergeant Paine (Bernard Lee), a fan of Martins' pulp novels; and his superior, Major Calloway (Trevor Howard), who says Lime was a criminal and suggests Martins leave town.
An official of the British occupying forces (Wilfrid Hyde- White) subsequently approaches Martins, requesting that he give a lecture and offering to pay for his lodging. Viewing this as an opportunity to clear his friend's name, Martins decides to remain in Vienna. He receives an invitation to meet from Lime's friend, . Before dying, according to Kurtz, Lime asked Kurtz and Popescu to take care of Martins and Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli), Lime's actress girlfriend. Hoping to gather more information, Martins goes to see Anna at her theatre, where she suggests in passing that Harry's death may not have been accidental. She then accompanies Martins to question the porter at Lime's apartment building.
The porter claims Lime was killed immediately and could not have given any instructions to his friends before dying. He also states that Kurtz and Popescu did not move the body out of the street alone, but were helped by a third man. Martins berates him for not being more forthcoming with the police about what he knows.
Concerned for his family's safety, the porter indignantly tells Martins not to involve him. Shortly afterwards the police, searching Anna's flat for evidence, find and confiscate her forged passport and detain her. Anna tells Martins that she is of Czechoslovak nationality and will be deported from Austria by the Russian occupying forces if discovered. Martins visits Lime's .
Winkel (Erich Ponto), who says that he arrived at the accident after Lime was dead, and only two men were present. Later, the porter secretly offers Martins more information but is murdered before their arranged meeting. When Martins arrives, unaware of the murder, a young boy recognizes him as having argued with the porter earlier and points this out to the gathering bystanders, who become hostile, and then mob- like. Escaping from them, Martins returns to the hotel, and a cab whisks him away. He fears it is taking him to his death, but takes him to the book club. With no lecture prepared, he stumbles until Popescu, in the audience, asks him about his next book. Martins replies that it will be called The Third Man, .
Popescu tells Martins that he should stick to fiction. Martins sees two thugs approaching and flees.
Calloway again advises Martins to leave Vienna, but Martins refuses and demands that Lime's death be investigated. Calloway reluctantly reveals that Lime had been stealing penicillin from military hospitals, and selling it on the black market diluted so much that many patients died. In postwar Vienna, antibioticswere new and scarce outside military hospitals and commanded a very high price. Calloway's evidence convinces Martins.
Disillusioned, he agrees to leave Vienna. Martins visits Anna to say good- bye and finds that she also knows of Lime's misdeeds, but that her feelings toward him are unchanged. She tells him she is to be deported.
Upon leaving her flat, he notices someone watching from a dark doorway; a neighbour's lit window briefly reveals the person to be Lime (Orson Welles), who flees, ignoring Martins's calls. Martins summons Calloway, who deduces that Lime has escaped through the sewers. The British police immediately exhume Lime's coffin and discover that the body is that of Joseph Harbin, an orderly who stole penicillin for Lime and went missing after turning informant.
The next day, Martins goes to Kurtz and demands to see Lime. Lime comes out to meet him and they ride Vienna's Ferris wheel, the Wiener Riesenrad. Lime obliquely threatens Martins's life but relents when told that the police already know his death and funeral were faked. In a monologue on the insignificance of his victims, he reveals the full extent of his amorality. He again offers a job to Martins and leaves.
Calloway asks Martins to help lure Lime out to capture him, and Martins agrees, asking for Anna's safe conduct out of Vienna in exchange. However, Anna refuses to leave and remains loyal to Lime. Exasperated, Martins decides to leave but changes his mind after Calloway shows Martins the children who are victims of Lime's diluted penicillin, brain- damaged as a result of meningitis. Lime sneaks out for his rendezvous with Martins, but Anna, still loyal to Lime, arrives and warns him off just in time. He tries again to escape through the sewers, but the police are there in force. Lime shoots and kills Paine, but Calloway shoots and wounds Lime.
Badly injured, Lime drags himself up a ladder to a street grating exit but cannot lift it. Martins picks up Paine's revolver, follows Lime, reaches him, but hesitates. Lime looks at him and nods. A shot is heard. Later, Martins attends Lime's second funeral. At the risk of missing his flight out of Vienna, Martins waits in the cemetery to speak to Anna.
She approaches him from a distance and walks past, ignoring him. Production. In 1. Elizabeth Montagu in Vienna. She gave him tours of the city, its sewers and some of its less reputable night- clubs. She also introduced Greene to Peter Smolka, the eastern European correspondent for The Times. Smolka gave Greene the stories about the black market in Vienna.
A small portion of his narration appears in a modified form at the film's beginning in Reed's voice- over: . Other differences include both Martins' and Lime's nationalities; they are English in the book. Martins' given name is Rollo rather than Holly.
Popescu's character is an American called Cooler. Crabbin was a single character in the novella. The screenplay's original draft replaced him with two characters, played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, but ultimately in the film, as in the novella, Crabbin remains a single character. There is also a difference of ending. The novella's implies that Anna and Martins are about to begin a new life together, in stark contrast to the unmistakable snub by Anna that closes the film. 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 except that before they turned out of my sight her hand was through his arm — which is how a story usually begins.