When novelist Holly Martins travels to postwar Vienna he finds himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend named Harry Lime, who had just happened to offer him a job.
When Martins arrives and is told that his friend had been killed by a car when crossing the street it doesn’t all add up for him, meeting two British military police and everything is not as it seems. Martins begins to ask questions about Lime’s death and the accounts differ a lot between the people saying what they saw. Calloway is not overly intersted in reopening the investigation into his death and that he was involved in things he shouldn’t have been.
The third man carrying the body is something of interest to Martins as he continues to delve into the case. Anna Schmidt an actress was the girlfriend of Lime and we can easily see what is going to happen with Martins from the first meeting. The rest of the film becomes the cat and mouse style chase with a lovely little twist to keep it all interesting.
Film-noir is a genre that I really feel that I need to explore a lot more, having only seen a couple of films that fit that and I have throughly enjoyed the ones I have watched so far. The Third Man has a lot of charm and suspense that make it very good viewing.
Joseph Cotton leads the film in very good fashion with Trevor Howard being fantastic in support, considering my love for Brief Encounter it was brilliant to watch him in something else. Alida Valli is very good alongside Cotten and I felt as though that wait to eventually see Orson Welles was supsense on its own!
My wife and I saw this masterpiece in Vienna more than a decade ago, where it still shows two to three times a week in a local theater…I think it’s the longest running theatrical film in cinema history – nothing more fun than to see it there and then go find a few of the filming locations!
Oh wow that’s amazing that it’s still shown at the cinema!
Yep I just checked again and 2-3 times a week in the daytime! So cool!
That really is amazing, I love anything like that!