Review of The Third Man (1949) by Eric W — 01 Jan 2010

?Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.?

Behold one of the best quotes from one of the best scenes in cinema history, which is rumoured to have taken over 40 takes to get right as it was adlibbed entirely by the films co-star Orson Welles. It is a rather minor role which he only decided to take to raise money for his next film, Othello. Orson Welles admits himself that he didn?t care if he was acting in a good film, just that he was getting paid and was raising enough money to begin production, which began a year after The Third Man was released. Something that probably wasn?t expected though was that the reception and fame that Welles received for only being on screen for around twenty minutes, with only around five minutes of dialogue.

In The Third Man Joseph Cotten stars as Holly Martins, an American novella writer who is broke and heading to Vienna to meet his friend Harry Lime who had offered him a job. When Holly arrives there however he is shocked to discover that Harry had been killed, run down by a car in the street. As Holly begins to ask people what happened and everyone?s stories are suspiciously different, he decides to try and find out the truth about his friend?s death. Along the way he meets Harry?s girlfriend Anna (played by Alida Valli, but simply credited as Valli) who joins him in his investigation.

Set at the end of the Second World War, the film draws on the fact that Vienna is separated into zones ? a British, a French, a Russian, a German and an international zone at the centre of the city. This is sued to good effect when the plot begins to thicken and Holly begins to discover more and more what his friend was involved in.

Orson Welles isn?t the only one who gives a good performance. Joseph Cotten does well as the man with no money and nowhere to go, and Alida Valli puts in a good performance as the grieving girlfriend confused about why Harry has been killed. Overall, The Third Man is a superb landmark film noir filled with tension and some superb performances, especially from Orson Welles.