The Greatest Crime Film of All-Time: The Third Man

Otto Penzler ranks, analyzes, & celebrates the 106 greatest crime films of all-time. Catch up on the series and find new installments daily here.

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The Third Man (1949)

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TYPE OF FILM: Suspense/Espionage

STUDIO: London Films

PRODUCER: Carol Reed

DIRECTOR: Carol Reed

SCREENWRITER: Graham Greene

SOURCE: The Third Man, novella by Graham Greene

RUNNING TIME: 104 minutes

PRINCIPAL PLAYERS:

Orson Welles……………………………………………………………………………Harry Lime

Joseph Cotten……………………………………………………………………..…Holly Martins

(Alida) Valli………………………………………………………………………….Anna Schmidt

Trevor Howard……………………………………………………………………..Major Calloway

Bernard Lee………………………………………………………………………….Sergeant Paine

Paul Hoerbiger……………………………………………………………………………….Porter

Wilfrid Hyde-White………………………………………………………………………..Crabbin

Ernest Deutsch……………………………………………………………………….“Baron” Kurtz

Sigfried Breuer……………………………………………………………………………..Popescu

Erich Ponto………………………………………………………………………………Dr. Winkel

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DID YOU KNOW?

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Graham Greene based the villainous Harry Lime on Kim Philby, the infamous British double agent. Greene had been a member of the British Secret Intelligence Service until 1944, when he abruptly resigned. It has been suggested that the reason for his resignation was that he suspected Philby of being a traitor and did not want to actively assist him. Greene, himself a communist sympathizer, did not report Philby, who continued his activities for some time after Greene’s resignation

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THE STORY

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THE THIRD MAN, Joseph Cotten, 1949

American novelist Holly Martins is invited to take a job with his old friend Harry Lime in postwar Vienna, which is divided into four occupied zones (English, American, French and Russian). Martins arrives to find that his friend has been killed in an automobile accident. He rushes to the cemetery, where he sees Lime’s lovely girlfriend, Anna, and meets Major Calloway, who informs him that Lime was a criminal, dealing in black-market penicillin that he watered down, killing or harming numbers of children.

Martins vows to clear Lime’s name and meets with Anna, who believes Lime was murdered. Although Lime’s friend Kurtz tells them that Lime lived long enough for his physician to show up, the porter in Lime’s building says he died instantly. When Martins and Anna return to question the porter further, they find he has been murdered.

After Martins had seen children hospitalized because of diluted penicillin, he is disgusted by his friend’s actions and decides to return to the United States, but not before telling Anna that he has fallen in love with her. As he leaves her room, he spots Lime, who is not dead after all. Martins calls Major Calloway, and together they search for Lime, without success. When they arrange to have Lime’s coffin exhumed, another man’s body is found in his place.

Martins and Lime arrange to meet at a Ferris wheel in an amusement park, where Lime casually talks of his criminal acts, comparing people to little dots on the ground from their great height and warning Martins to stay away from the police. Martins goes to the police anyway, offering to help capture Lime if they will ensure safe passage out of Vienna for Anna, who angrily refuses the offer and now regards Martins as a betrayer of his friend. Martins sets himself up as a decoy, but when Lime arrives, Anna warns him and he flees to his secret escape route in the giant sewer of Vienna. Fleeing, Lime shoots a British soldier but is himself shot by Martins.

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There are numerous differences between the film and the book, which was written essentially to be a film treatment without thought to publication as a novel; it was published after the release of the film.

In Greene’s book, the main male characters are all British and, as the story concludes, Holly Martins and Anna walk away together. In the film version, Cotten waits for her as she slowly walks toward him on a long-tree-lined path; she never looks at him as she walks past him.

The first choice to play Holly Martins was Cary Grant, with Noel Coward selected to play Harry Lime. When the film was rewritten to make those characters American, David O. Selznick suggested Robert Mitchum for the role of Lime, as his popularity had increased dramatically after the headlines reported his arrest for marijuana possession. His presence, noted Selznick, would be hugely important at the box office, while the other actor considered, Orson Welles, would not add a dollar to the gross, he wrote in a memo. When Mitchum was sentenced to jail and therefore unable to work, Welles took the role because he was, not unusually, in dire need of money to finance his film, Othello.

The most famous line in the film (see below) was written by Orson Welles, not Graham Greene. In fact, it has been reported that Welles wrote virtually all the dialogue for every scene in which he appears.

There are two versions of The Third Man. The British version begins with a voice-over by producer/director Carol Reed, in which the division of Vienna into zones is described. This version is approximately eleven minutes longer than the American, which was somewhat re-edited by Selznick. Here, the voice-over is narrated by Joseph Cotten.

Carol Reed received an Academy Award nomination for Best Director. The only Oscar the film won was for Robert Krasker’s black-and-white cinematography. It was named Best Film at the 1949 Cannes Film Festival.

In 1952, the BBC produced a radio series variously titled The Third Man, The Lives of Harry Lime, and Harry Lime Adventures, with Orson Welles as the voice of the protagonist. Seven years later, BBC Television and Twentieth Century-Fox coproduced a syndicated television series, The Third Man, which starred Michael Rennie as Lime, who was now an international adventurer.

The very famous theme music played by Anton Karas, known as “The Third Man Theme,” was played throughout the film on a zither and became a best-selling record in the United Kingdom; it was also used as the theme for the radio series.

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BEST LINE

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Harry Lime: “In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”