Actors Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles
The zither music repeating its eternal melody, the intrepid chase through the sewers, the lights and shadows that generate a disturbing and disturbing atmosphere. Few films have caused as much impact as the third man , the story that Carol Reed brought to the big screen based on a script-novel by Graham Greene. A masterpiece of film noir drawn on a scene of hunger, darkness and cold.
In the background, the city of Vienna with a masterful photograph. Not the Vienna of Strauss and the bombastic palaces, nor that of the splendor of the opera and the elegance of the waltz. It is the Vienna that has been hit hard by World War II. A broken and soulless city, divided into four sectors controlled by the allied powers, turned into a polyglot gibberish.
It is in this Vienna, with its nineteenth-century buildings in ruins, with the Danube relegated to a cesspool of corpses, where the dubious morality of beings that emerge from horror to make their way on the black market.
American actor Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins
LOVED AND HATED
70 years have passed since the premiere of this film that is today one of the great jewels of the Seventh Art. A classic that the Austrian public still treats with suspicion: the post-war theme and the images of destruction have not healed in a society that strives to project a resplendent image.
However, there are many who travel to Vienna in the footsteps of this legendary film. And none of them misses, of course, their museum. yes there is a Third Man Museum which is rather the private collection of Gerhard Strassgschwandtner, a fan who managed to collect 2,500 original objects: from promotional posters in all languages to the same projector that was used for its premiere in 1949, passing through dozens of documents that explain the historical context.
Carol Reed (left) talking to Orson Welles, during filming in Vienna
SLIPPERY ORSON WELLES
The Third Man tour covers easily identifiable places, there where some scenes that have marked the image of the city were filmed. Especially from the hand of that splendid Orson Welles in the role of Harry Lime.
Already the first appearance of him supposes a whole luminous lesson: hidden at number 8 Schreyvogel street, very close to the house where Beethoven lived , a cat is placed at his feet and only when a lady opens a window, his face lights up casually, letting out a cynical smile.
Sad and soulless, all of Vienna appears plunged into shadow, which exudes a gloomy air. The empty streets, the wet cobblestones, the always leaden sky. This is what happens when Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) goes to Josefs Platz looking for his great friend and the doorman tells her that he has been run over.
FROM THE HEIGHTS TO THE UNDERWORLD
“In Italy, in thirty years of Borgia domination, there were wars and murders, but also Michelangelo, Leonardo and the Renaissance, while in Switzerland they had five hundred years of love, peace and democracy. And what was the result? the cuckoo clock ».
Excuse the imprecision (the cuckoo clock is not Swiss but German), this verbal duel between Harry and Holly is one of the most sublime moments. A dialogue that takes place in the Prater Ferris wheel, from where the men look like ants.
Then there is, of course, the memorable escape through the sewers. Twenty scenes from The Third Man were shot in underground Vienna, which has a network of 2,500 kilometres. None of them, by the way, could count on Orson Welles, who refused to do so "disgusting."
Yes, he raised, yes, the triangular caskets that lead to the entrails and through which today tourists slide in search of the film's locations. Yes, you can take a guided tour of the sewers.
The historic Ferris wheel in Prater Park
AN ULTIMATE MUSIC
Sentimentally associated with the film is its peculiar melody, in the same way that Colonel Bogey's march in The Bridge on the River Kwai is. An acoustic imprint that we owe to Anton Karas, an anonymous musician who made his living in a tavern in the 19th district.
When Carol Reed heard it one night after the shoot, she knew that this should be the soundtrack.
Become a hit-parade on British and American radio shows in the 1950s, today they exist all over the world to 400 versions of the so-called Harry Lime Theme.
Of them, almost fifty can be heard in the Museum of The Third Man: there they have a jukebox with, among others, a performance by the Beatles... and even another by the Dynamic Duo.
One of the scenes from The Third Man
EYE, WHAT IS SPOILER
Because of his dialogues, his description of atmospheres, his sinister characters, his exposition of suspense, intrigue and melancholy, The Third Man, 80 years later, continues to give off the strength of the anthological works of cinema.
And Vienna, thanks to this film, is still one of the best portrayed cities on screen. The outcome of it the great cemetery of Zentralfriedhof, It has been considered by moviegoers among the best in history.
Wherever the funerary monuments of Mozart, Brahms or Schubert are, there is finally the definitive goodbye to the charismatic Harry Lime.
The Third Man, a masterpiece of film noir