4K Gold: The Third Man

In the seven years since I have worked on this blog, I’ve rarely talked about the films of the past since I’ve only talked about what’s currently in theaters. Last week, I went and saw a 4K restored version of Carol Reed’s 1948 classic film noir, The Third Man. It’s an extraordinary film that has not aged in terms of Graeme Greene’s brilliant screenplay, Robert Krasker’s cinematography, and Anton Karas’ beautiful, yet chilling, score on the Zephyr. I’ve seen the film five times and introduced it to my film students while I was working as a student-instructor in New Hampshire and it still manages to pack a punch 67 years later. 

For those of you not familiar with the film, Joseph Cotton plays Holly Martins, a down-on-his-luck pulp novelist who goes to Postwar Vienna to work at an unknown job for his childhood friend, Harry Lime. As soon as Holly gets into town, his estranged friend is fatally struck by a car. Trevor Howard plays Calloway, a British military police officer, who convinces Holly that Lime was a criminal and that he should be left as dead.  As Martin’s tries to find his friend’s assailant, the story unravels into deception and greed leading to a suspenseful conclusion within the sewers of Vienna. 

At the forefront of The Third Man is Orson Wells’ performance as the illusive Harry Lime. It has been argued that Wells played significant role in the production of the film and it’s hard not to refute that argument. Carol Reed must have had Citizen Kane on his mind when he decided to shoot The Third Man from tilted angles and from the floor up to the ceiling as Wells did with his director of photography, Gregg Toland. Also, like Wells’ Charles Foster Kane, Harry Lime is an opportunist who wants something more than wealth and companionship; power. 

The Third Man remains a canonical film within the film-noir genre. It’s hard to imagine films like Sunset Blvd. or Chinatown being made had it not been for The Third Man hovering over Billy Wilder and Robert Towne as a source of inspiration. Even Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning film, The Departed, pays homage to The Third Man and its chilling ending as Alida Valli walks past the camera before the credits roll. Currently, The Third Man is being shown in selected theaters in the United States and is soon to be released by Studio-Canal on DVD and Blu-Ray. Next to the cuckoo clock, The Third Man is one of the most celebrated works to come out of Vienna.