#BATTLE OF VIENNA MOVIE MOVIE#

Even the resident exiles are corrupt Crabbin ( Wilfrid Hyde-White), the head of the discussion group, chatters about culture while smoothly maneuvering his mistress out of sight through doors and up stairs.Īs for Harry Lime: He allows Orson Welles to make the most famous entrance in the history of the movies, and one of the most famous speeches. Paine ( Bernard Lee), Calloway's aide, who levels the drunken Holly with a shot to the chin and then apologizes. The only trusting faces are those of innocents like the hall porter (Paul Hoerbiger) who tells Holly, 'There was another man.

Even a little boy with a rubber ball looks like a wizened imp. Winkel (Erich Ponto), the ratlike Popescu (Siegfried Breuer). Then there are the faces: Joseph Cotton's open, naive face contrasts with the 'friends' of Harry Lime: the corrupt 'Baron' Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch) the shifty Dr. Vienna in 'The Third Man' is a more particular and unmistakable *place* than almost any other location in the history of the movies the action fits the city like a hand slipping on a glove. (During a stakeout for Lime, a little balloon man wanders onto the scene, and his shadow is a monster three stories high). And the bizarre lighting makes the city into an expressionist nightmare.

Wide-angle lenses distort faces and locations. More shots, I suspect, are tilted than are held straight they suggest a world out of joint. Reed and his Academy Award-winning cinematographer, Robert Krasker, also devised a reckless, unforgettable visual style. And he insisted on Karas' zither music ('The Third Man Theme' was one of 1950's biggest hits). Reed defied convention by shooting entirely on location in Vienna, where mountains of rubble stood next to gaping bomb craters, and the ruins of empire supported a desperate black market economy. His film would have been forgotten in a week.

#BATTLE OF VIENNA MOVIE MOVIE#

Selznick, his American producer, over every detail of the movie Selznick wanted to shoot on sets, use an upbeat score and cast Noel Coward as Harry Lime. Carol Reed worked for the British Army's wartime documentary unit, and the screenplay was by Graham Greene, who not only wrote about spies but occasionally acted as one. 'The Third Man' (1949) was made by men who knew the devastation of Europe at first hand. Certainly Holly has fallen in love with her, although his trusting Yankee heart is no match for her defenses. But Harry had a girl named Anna ( Alida Valli), who Holly sees at Lime's grave, and perhaps she has some answers. Calloway ( Trevor Howard), the British officer in charge, bluntly says Lime was an evil man, and advises Holly to take the next train home. How did Lime die? That question is the engine that drives the plot, as Martins plunges into the murk that Lime left behind. But Lime is being buried when Martins arrives in Vienna.

He has come at the invitation of his college chum Harry Lime. Into this sinkhole of intrigue falls an American innocent: Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton), alcoholic author of pulp Westerns. The shattered postwar city has been divided into French, American, British and Russian zones, each with its own cadre of suspicious officials. The story begins with a spoken prologue ('I never knew the old Vienna, before the war.').

Battle of vienna movie