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The Third Man
Sign in to saveAlso known as Third Man, The 3rd Man, 3rd Man
1949 film directed by Carol Reed
OverviewAI-generated
The Third Man is a 1949 British film directed by Carol Reed. The screenwriters include Graham Greene, Orson Welles, and Alexander Korda, while the producers were Alexander Korda, David O. Selznick, and Carol Reed. The cast features Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, and Trevor Howard. Anton Karas composed the music, and Robert Krasker served as director of photography. Produced by London Films, the black-and-white picture was filmed in Vienna, Austria, and released in English, German, and Russian.
Set in Allied-occupied Austria, the film is classified as a film noir, mystery, drama, and thriller. Its narrative locations include Vienna, and its main subjects involve a foreigner, profiteering, and a hoax. The film has a runtime of 104 minutes and uses the Academy ratio aspect ratio. It received the BAFTA Award for Best British Film and the Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix. Additionally, it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, BAFTA Award for Best Film, Academy Award for Best Film Editing, and the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film.
Synthesized by Vinony from 42 facts across 5 sources: Wikidata, TMDb, Internet Archive, IMDb, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Film · TMDB
7.9In postwar Vienna, Austria, Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, arrives penniless as a guest of his childhood chum Harry Lime, only to learn he has died. Martins develops a conspiracy theory after learning of a "third man" present at the time of Harry's death, running into interference from British officer Major Calloway, and falling head-over-heels for Harry's grief-stricken lover, Anna.
Cast
- Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins
- Alida Valli as Anna Schmidt
- Trevor Howard as Major Calloway
- Orson Welles as Harry Lime
- Paul Hörbiger as Karl the Porter
- Ernst Deutsch as 'Baron' Kurtz
Themes
- staged death
- black market
- cemetery
- investigation
- soviet military
- prater
- british army
- austria
- cover-up
- film noir
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~27 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Third Man (Der dritte Mann) is a 1949 film noir directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene, and starring Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, Alida Valli as Anna Schmidt, Orson Welles as Harry Lime and Trevor Howard as Major Calloway. Set in post-World War II Allied-occupied Vienna, the film centres on American writer Holly Martins, who arrives in the city to accept a job with his friend Harry Lime, only to learn that he has died. Martins stays in Vienna to investigate Lime's death, becoming infatuated with Lime's girlfriend Anna Schmidt.
The use of black-and-white German expressionist-influenced cinematography by Robert Krasker, with its harsh lighting and Dutch angles, is a major feature of The Third Man. Combined with the use of ruined locations in Vienna, the style evokes exhaustion and cynicism at the start of the Cold War.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “The Third Man” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.