The Third Man (1949)

1950 • 104 minutes

About this movie

In 1949, an American writer of westerns, Holly Martins, arrives in post-war Vienna to visit his old friend Harry Lime. On arrival, he learns that his friend has been killed in a street accident, and when he meets Calloway, chief of the British Military Police in Vienna, he is informed that Lime was in fact a black marketer wanted by the police. He decides to prove Harry's innocence, but is Harry really dead?

Ratings and reviews

SPOILER... the only real complaint I have with the movie is that the idea of the title "the third man" becomes insignificant after we find out that harry is still alive. everything else is flawless, especially the brilliant speech of the cuckoo clock.

Carol Reed's "The Third Man" is certainly one of the greatest films ever made. It is a masterpiece in every way a film can be a masterpiece. The integration of script, lighting, photography, music and acting is at the level of the greatest artworks in all genres, and illustrates more readily than any other the esssential rightness of Aristotle's central criterion of integrity as the yardstick by which any artwork that takes form over time must be judged. If a martian were to ask me to explain why human beings care so much about cinema, and I could use only one illustration, it would be "The Third Man."

Fantastic post-WWII film, shot in Vienna. Great cast: Joseph Cotten ❤, Orson Welles, Alida Valli, the always reliable Trevor Howard. Brilliant direction by Carol Reed, and the cinematographer (??), plus the famous zither music. One to see over and over....some unsubtitled German spoken, but now we have closed captioning, yay! Chiaroscuro on display!🎥