I just watched _The Third Man_ in full for the first time

Grabbed me the moment I saw it, that look. Amazing stuff. And oh yes, THE SCORE. But I'm going to catch some sleep and might ponder more on the morrow.

The photography, the lighting, the editing...*raises hands helplessly*...can't add much beyond saying how astonishing it all was.

Two things about the ending struck me -- the final gunshot has the same impact and sense of setting/location (away from the camera/audience) as does The French Connection; Friedkin must have intended that as a nod. And finally, what I really liked about the absolute final camera shot/scene was that there were several different points where it could have ended, but that it turned out to be the longest and the least hopeful was something I wasn't expecting.

And we're fuckin' counting fuckin' Touch Of Evil in those? Yeah, I know it's canonical, but it's fuckin' great.

Ned - you're so lucky to have found The Third Man used!

i did like how Bernard Lee played the British Sergeant, and later "M".

I know, it was bugging me for a bit that I knew the actor but couldn't place him, even though Lee had a fairly distinct voice (though M did speak differently). And I have the first five Bonds on DVD as well!

There's all sorts of great movie love stuff in it, but taken as a whole it isn't all that special.

Hm, I'd have to think about that more after reviewing it sometime. Definitely worked as a first time experience, though I had guessed the exact nature of the 'third man' riddle about a third of the way in or so.

What about the chase/action sequences filmed that way?

"You think I'm pursuing you! But I'm not!"

no, but i was psyched by all those tax-free dots down there!

Guy Hamilton, assistant director to Reed, director of Goldfinger and a couple of others later.

http://www.istrianet.org/istria/illustri/valli/images/valli1-300.jpg

i was just thinking about how this one of the movies i could probably watch at any given time.

Oh, pish.

A thread about "The Third Man" with no mention of Alida Valli!?!??!?!

It's worse that there's only passing mention of Graham Greene.

One time I went to the Walter Reade to see some old unseen postwar German movies that had previously been dismissed as being "Papas Kino" and I recognized that guy and said "Hey, that's the guy who runs the hotel in The Third Man!" and a German lady of a certain age with lots of hairspray in her (probably dyed) blonde hair turned to me and said: "That's Paul Hörbiger," drawing out the umlaut as long as possible. Then I looked him up on IMDB and found out his was in more than 100 movies!

A thread about "The Third Man" with no mention of Alida Valli!?!??!?!
I

know her only as "Valli."

yes as a matter of fact!!

ok ok it was yours!!

btw is your handle a ref to the dashiell hammett book?

How is Ralph Richardson? I've adored him ever since I saw him in The Heiress.

What was the censored stuff? The more 'explicit' dialogue re Baines-Julie's affair?
I think so. Maybe some of the stuff with the lady of the evening as well.

-- s1ocki (slytus...), February 21st, 2006 12:13 PM. (slutsky)

still think that

xpost 8 Men Out is totally inscrutable.

blount's comment about capitalism is probably the unintentional answer to my question about the decline of reed

Yes! One of the film's subtlties is that as an audience we initially identify with Holly because he's curious and vulgar (the Innocent Abroad of Henry James' nightmares, 50 years later); then we retract our empathy slowly as Reed builds suspense to Lime's first appearance, after which it disappears entirely -- Lime is so much more attractive and intelligent than poor compassionate Holly Martens -- until the conclusion. It's the tragedy of a virtuous dull man

(though I didn't find Fallen Idol as interesting as The Third Man. As a thriller, brilliant, as a movie less so.)

VALLI

in the opening credits

know her only as "Valli."

Let me second that!

is the ridiculously tragic final scene. I can't think of another film with such an emotional denouement.

(I can, actually. Etre Et Avoir, for the final look on the teacher's face.)

Just saying.

Special Features
#
SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES
#
All-new, restored high-definition digital transfer
#
Video introduction by writer-director Peter Bogdanovich
#
Two audio commentaries: one by filmmaker Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Tony Gilroy, and one by film scholar Dana Polan
#
Shadowing "The Third Man" (2005), a ninety-minute feature documentary on the making of the film
#
Abridged recording of Graham Greene’s treatment, read by actor Richard Clarke
#
"Graham Greene: The Hunted Man," an hour-long, 1968 episode of the BBC's Omnibus series, featuring a rare interview with the novelist
#
Who Was the Third Man? (2000), a thirty-minute Austrian documentary featuring interviews with cast and crew
#
The Third Man on the radio: the 1951 “A Ticket to Tangiers” episode of The Lives of Harry Lime series, written and performed by Orson Welles; and the 1951 Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of The Third Man
#
Illustrated production history with rare behind-the-scenes photos, original UK press book, and U.S. trailer
#
Actor Joseph Cotten’s alternate opening voice-over narration for the U.S. version
#
Archival footage of postwar Vienna
#
A look at the untranslated foreign dialogue in the film
#
PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by Luc Sante, Charles Drazin, and Philip Kerr
#
Also: a web-exclusive essay on Anton Karas by musician John Doe

I like where this thread ended up.

So anyway I got the two disc edition for Xmas and I just rewatched the movie for the first time since, well, since I started this thread. There was something that grabbed me in the first few minutes this time through that I don't think I'd mentioned on here yet but now it's slipped my mind...it'll come back. I think.

the Criterion set reports in a couple places (Soderbergh-Gilroy commentary) that Reed was able to shoot round-the-clock cuz of Benzedrine.

Seems kinda petty if not downright weird, but I lost some of my love for this movie after learning that Welles refused to go into the sewers (except for a little).

This is the only current serious candidate for the position of 'my favourite film ever'.

yes, Welles was quite the diva.

I just watched Lady from Shanghai, and it was weird watching him try to play a tough guy.

It's a distanced tough guy (equally distantly Irish).

distantly Irish because he spoke like the Lucky Charms leprechaun?

so many things about lady from shanghai are weird and off-key, but in a way that's what i like about it.

yes, it's a wacky noir nightmare!

and The Third Man would be unthinkable w/out it (and the earlier Welles films).

"I never knew the old Vienna before the war, with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm."

My favourite film.

Did Spongebob rip off the score, or is it just me?

I think my favorite visual from this was when the cop was like "WWII general would keep their enemies portraits on the wall" and it shows the two photos of Harry Lime in his file, looking like the most gleeful/dangerous/crazy man in existence.

Hmm yeah, that watery zither is quite Spongebobesque, isn't it? One of my favourite scores ever.

plus, they used to show us bits of the flick in film class. as the prof noted, "watch how the screen tilts. everytime the frame is tilted like that, someone is lying to Holly."
― Kingfish Beatbox (Kingfish), Thursday, February 19, 2004 3:56 AM (6 years ago) Bookmark

aw I wish I hadn't read this. the cinematography in this is so incredible, the tilted frames. winogrand eat yer heart out

I haven't got a sensible name, Calloway.

So did anyone know about this?

“After one year and 102 blog posts containing a collective 125,000 words, our Still Dots project was complete,” write Matt Levine and Jeremy Meckler at the Walker Art Center. “Since December 13, 2011, we’d been pulling one frame from every 62 seconds of screen time in Carol Reed‘s remarkable film The Third Man and, twice per week, writing an in-depth analysis of it…. Our analyses related to specific frames, either discussing the narrative or characters at that particular point in the film’s chronology, dissecting the mysterious visual factors that conspire to create The Third Man‘s shadowy environs, or taking wild flights of fancy based on the particularities of that frozen moment. Through our project we tied in serious thinkers and authors (from Freud to Marx, Sontag to Dostoyevsky, Einstein to Eisenstein), various films (anything from The War Game to Star Wars), and other aspects of contemporary culture (superhero comics, Looney Tunes, Mad Men, and The Wire), to name a few. Still Dots was inspired largely by Roland Barthes, who in his famous 1970 essay ‘The Third Meaning‘ considers film stills as separate from both film (since they lack the illusion of movement) and photography (since they are not photographs so much as evidence of that flickering illusion that they constitute).”

http://blogs.walkerart.org/filmvideo/category/still-dots/

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-the-third-man-all-year-long

on re-watching, imo the best welles moment is cosily deciding not to throw cotton out the big wheel after all old man

Our man in havana doesnt even approach this, someone upthread on crack

we dug up your coffin.

and found harbin?

[nod]

...pity.

as if i'd do anything to you. or you to me! you're just a little mixed up about things in general.

listen, i'd like to cut you in, old man. there's no one left in vienna i can really trust, and we've always done everything together. if you do want in i'll meet you any place, any time. but when we do meet, old man, it's you i want to see. not the police. you'll remember that, won't you?

Free of income tax, old man!

the other day someone wrote into a tumblr i haven't updated in years asking a question about this movie

I still do believe in God, old
man... I believe in God and Mercy
and all that... The dead are
happier dead. They don't miss much
here...

CAMERA PANS RL with him as he moves slightly still, looking
off L, and starts to idly write on the window at his side -
out of picture.

CLOSE SHOT - THE WINDOW

Wheel turning over scene. Harry's hand in picture from CR -
he has drawn on the steamed-up window a heart with an arrow
through it. He is writing the word ANNA above it.

HARRY (O.S.)
...poor devils.

actually i think my favorite is the dead are happier dead. they don't miss much here, poor devils. [taps anna's name.] what do you believe in?

ha!

oh holly, if you do get anna out of this, be kind to her; you'll find she's worth it. i wish i had asked you to bring some of those tablets from home.

just gonna keep posting in here endlessly it's darraghmac's fault

best bits of supporting business: baron kurtz's coyness about his gig at the casanova club ("one has to make a living somehow"); crabbin the aged propagandist hustling a rotating series of girls through doors and up stairs; popescu the ultracivilized romanian psychopath ("no ice for mr. martins!"); and of course poor innocent MAJOR PAYNE (played by the pre-dench M!) with his rhinoceros slide. lime sheds the blood of the lamb there.

no wait he's not major payne he's sergeant or something. just as well.

must you take those?

they'll be returned, miss.

they're private letters.

that's all right, miss; don't worry. we're used to it. like doctors.

i think, in this movie, there's a bit character in maybe the opening third of the movie, working in a ceiling lit office room, who wears a pair of glasses with sharply edged, perfectly trapezoidal frames. i have been searching for that exact pair of glasses for about 8 years now

the story of dayo's glasses will be 1/5th or so of my room 237-style exegesis of the third man

Prob the russian attache guy?

clnl pickering pwns in this too, oh i forgot m'hat

my favorite bit:

Sting: All this brings up a memory you two probably won't like. 'Next To You' is essentially a love song. However it was written during the height of punk, and Andy and Stewart complained it wasn't political enough. So I said, "Okay, go and write some lyrics." Andy came up with "I'm going to take a gun to you".

Copeland (sings): "Gun to you, gun to you, all I want is to take a gun to you!" That would have been great. Why didn't we do that?

Sting: Because I vetoed it.

yes that is also my favorite scene from The Third Man, a 1949 movie by carol reed starring joseph cotten and orson welles and sting

This bit contains some of Greene's best writing imo:

Copeland: 'Darkness' is a song about vertigo. I'm very proud of it, and there's not really much to say about it except that...

Sting: 'Vertigo' is an Alfred Hitchcock movie!

Copeland: True, but unlike you, Sting, I didn't steal my ideas from films or other literary sources. I came up with the crap I wrote my goddamn self!

Summers: That's easy for you to say, Stewart. You've never even read a book - or seen a film!

Haven't you heard, Callahan, I'm here as a guest of Miles Copeland and I.R.S. Records

I'll be your dumb decoy duck.

"In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? De doo doo doo, de da da da. That's all I want to say to you, Holly."

Heartbreaker, with your Ferris wheel, they chased a boy through Prater Park.

(Sorry, wrong doo doo doo doo doo)

new thing noticed, viewing #30 or something: holly sitting on the ground at the police excavation of lime's grave, unhelpfully trying to set a whiskey glass on fire

if you're not a very careful viewer movies just keep giving and giving

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v87/Inuxx/vlcsnap-2013-07-21-22h20m48s87_zps5f041211.png

Really gotta get this on dvd.

Trayce, in Australia it often shows up on those super-cheap packs of 10 movies; of course, it looks significantly less cool on the shelf in a lurid VALUE MOVIE PACK case than in a nice Criterion case, so I have my regrets

http://i.imgur.com/7zTW3Oe.jpg

I hate these movies based on games

Reminds me of the famous broken-image-link Mark S Decodes Mastermind For You thread.

"Zither not included"

David O. Selznick wanted to axe Karas' score

anyone else find the score kind of irritating?

just me then (and Selznick I guess)

No.

Yes.

I sort of find the whole movie a little bit irritating.

Tho I guess at least it's not boring, which I can't say for Reed's Odd Man Out.

It's a great theme, and I really like its use in the opening credits, but it's just so incessant and monotonous

Tho I guess at least it's not boring, which I can't say for Reed's Odd Man Out.

― You are exactly why people root for the apes (Eric H.)

I'd like to thank Eric for making me regret not a whit our divorce.

Mexican or Haitian?

No.

Yes.

― I Need Andmoreagain (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, July 20, 2014 5:44 PM

otm

I sort of find the whole movie a little bit irritating.

― You are exactly why people root for the apes (Eric H.), Sunday, July 20, 2014 10:47 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Tho I guess at least it's not boring, which I can't say for Reed's Odd Man Out.

― You are exactly why people root for the apes (Eric H.), Sunday, July 20, 2014 10:47 PM (34 minutes ago)

i now feel even more confident that these are two of the best films ever

Eric, you forgot to go for challops triple and dis The Fallen Idol.

Love this movie. Saw it most recently at a special screening in Vienna, and then went to the Third Man Museum there the following day. The score was playing incessantly throughout the exhibit, so it did become a little irritating after a while.

the insane repetitiveness of the score is really expressive. i love it!

well now Eric knows how the rest of us feel about de Palma

you know i don't know why but it wasn't until this year that i realized the ending of long goodbye was a really obvious homage to the ending of this film

Eric, you forgot to go for challops triple and dis The Fallen Idol.

Oliver > all three

OK, that really was challops.

they think you did it.

of course a situation like that does tempt amateurs. but they can't stay the course like a professional.

ten minutes too late. already gone... mr lime--an accident. knocked over by a car. in front of the house. i have seen it myself. killed at once. immediately. already in [points upward] hell. or in [shrugs, points downward] heaven. sorry for the gravediggers. hard work.

wait, holly walking down the sewer pipe out of the fog mirrors anna walking down the cemetery road between the trees

these are the only things that help - these tablets. These are the last. Can't get them anywhere in Europe any more

oh, and when we do meet, old man, it's you i want to see -- not the police. you'll remember that, won't you?

this time i noticed for the first time the sign at the hotel regretting they cannot serve austrians. holly never knows what country anyone's from or what it means. calloway.

actually re the tablets the really great line is "the same old indigestion". best satanic figures in movies.

Holly: You ever hear of 'The Lone Rider of Santa Fe'?
Calloway: Can't say as I have.
Holly
: 'Death at Double X Ranch,' uh, 'Raunch'

holly martins, sir? the writer? the author of death at double x ranch?

it's vonderful ze vay you keep ze tension

Ve haf to control ze intelligence from Zaigon.

http://i2.listal.com/image/2098481/600full-the-third-man-screenshot.jpg

http://www.thematinee.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/third-3.png

better img

https://catsonfilm.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/3rdman02.jpg

he only liked harry.

You're wrong about Harry. You are wrong about everything.

i wish he was dead. he would be safe from all of you then.

He was some kind of a man... What does it matter what you say about people?

sorry, wrong Orson Welles character

Not Valli's fault that her character annoys the hell out of me.

You're wrong about Anna. You're wrong about everything.

:)

Not Valli's fault that her character annoys the hell out of me.
Curious as to why. She obviously doesn't follow the normal 'arc,' but I kind of dig that fact that she doesn't really like Holly too much and never warms up to him. Also was her first name ever dropped before or after this particular film credit or was that just the product of a Selznick publicity prank?

Her dislike of Holly is fine and adult and all that; I meant Valli as an actress, whose simpering is so one note.

Fair enough, but I've never really liked her in anything else- this is her best role and performance!

She's fierce (not a word I like to use on the regular) in Suspiria.

Guess I could watch Senso again.

It was her birthday two days ago.

She's cast to simper through Senso; besides, I'm ogling at Farley Granger.

Have the impression that at some later point she was cast or typecast as evil housekeeper types, like Dame Judith Anderson in Rebecca but without the gravitas.

Never heard of this until just now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walk_Softly,_Stranger

y'all seen Welles' nutty Mr Arkadin? def has t3m as a departure point, in fact partly based on the Harry Lime radio series.

The reconstructed Confidential Report Criterion is likely the best version we'll ever see. It includes episodes of the radio program "The Lives of Harry Lime."

yes ive been rewatching. Michael Redgrave hilarious as gay antiques dealer.

y'all seen Welles' nutty Mr Arkadin?

watched a bunch of this on cable the other night - v enjoyable but I missed the beginning :(

prob doesnt matter as much as youd think

there's a great clip on the CC of Welles directing Paola Mori (later his wife irl, playing his daughter) while playing a scene with her.

yeah, Shakes, you could watch this movie at any point, makes no difference.

haha I did get that vibe and had no problem just going with it, which was one of the things I liked about ti

actually one of my favorite welles movies, lots of fun stuff. the goya party, the curiosity shop.

anna is kind of a hard part because the entire movie takes place within her ~72hour grieving period

(holly's grieving period is easier to watch since it takes the form of one of his books and it is vonderful the way he keeps the tension, but really it is only delusion that keeps him multi-note)

the scene in her apartment where she's wearing the HL bathrobe and holly is drunk and going on and on about trying to make her laugh is the most excruciating part of the movie, which they must have known because they put the perk-you-up welles reveal immediately after

btw eternal mysteries: does she say "sometimes he said i laughed too much" or "sometimes he said i loved too much"

this film is incredible.

random q: why do the Russians care so much about repatriating some random Czech woman?

I never knew there were snake charmers in Texas.

Some minor niggling points:
There seems to be an awful lot of time between the porter's death and then Holly and Anna arriving to find the accusatory crowd outside. Surely the body would have been discovered sooner. Also, why is the child unattended? And why, if the porter tells Holly to come back later when his wife is gone for the evening, is she not there to see the killers?

Anna shows up at the Cafe where Holly is waiting to meet Harry because "Kurtz told here" and "they were just arrested." Even so, how would he know, and if arrested how would he be able to tell her?

Manny Farber didn't like it as much as most of us

"I never knew the old Vienna before the war, with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm."

Anyway just noticed a few new things:
Anna refuses to throw dirt on Harry's purported grave during the first, fake burial, or burial of Harbin in Harry's place. Why? Because she is too upset? Because she knows Harry is alive? No to this latter, those who are in the know are eager to keep up the charade.

First spotting of live Harry is echoed/foreshadowed in other scenes of looking at window onto street, some from Anna's apartment, but also when porter looks out window into street with Holly to describe how the third man was ordinary looking - and at same time phone rings and there is no one there but heavy breathing when Anna picks up - is it Harry?

Also when Calloway looks out of window in his office and quips to Anna about Holly tailing her.

wait, holly walking down the sewer pipe out of the fog mirrors anna walking down the cemetery road between the trees

Connection that exists only in the cinematic unconscious: Harry getting ready to throw Holly out of the big wheel car in the Prater and Uncle Charlie Joseph Cotten trying to throw Young Charlie Teresa Wright from the train in Shadow of a Doubt.

Shot of porter calling from window to Holly in street inviting him to come by in the evening and then later shot of Kurtz and Winkel talking to Holly from window across the street from Prater. Holly knows better than to go inside since he knows what happened in the previous situation.

how does it look in digital?

Pretty sweet. First thing that stood out for me was Trevor Howard's black leather coat at the funeral.

Thought about changing horses and going to see the Les Blank Leon Russell instead but I stayed the course.

What kind of a spy do you think you are, satchel foot?

he moved his head, but the rest is good, isn't it?

what can i do, old man? i'm dead, aren't i?

First spotting of live Harry is echoed/foreshadowed in other scenes of looking at window onto street, some from Anna's apartment, but also when porter looks out window into street with Holly to describe how the third man was ordinary looking

forget how many times in these shots a passing streetcar softly sparks, possibly only once, but it is one of my fave small images

porter's speech there btw is as central as welles' later "dots that stopped": i didn't see his face. he didn't look up. he was quite... gewöhnlich. ordinary. he might have been just anybody.

oh the streetcar is on a shot from calloway's office window actually. "your american friend is still waiting for you."

my girl still hasn't seen this; would like to lure her to film forum for the remaster screening before it's gone.

You know what novel uses The Third Man to good effect? Memories of My Father Watching TV, by Curtis White.

@NextOnTCM
A mad zither player follows an American throughout Vienna as he searches for a missing friend. #TCM

wtf

lol feel like i've read that one before but idk where.

almost revived this last night to post this diss from the OW/jaglom book:

He didn't take the movie seriously. It wasn't a "Graham Greene" work. He gave me a line that I was supposed to say from atop the Wiener Reisenrad, the Ferris wheel: "Look at those people down there--they look like ants."

How is that book, btw?

pretty irresistible, some repetitions, some interesting variations. jaglom doesn't harry welles on film-school details the way bogdanovich did, so welles pretty much just raconteurs on his own terms, which is both good and bad. terrific stories all over of course and plenty of the kind of dirt that was kept out of the earlier book (that letter bogdanovich prints as explanation for redacting some ill-spoken-of name -- "always remember that your heart is god's little garden, yours sincerely, louisa may alcott" -- is the kind of letter jaglom didn't get), with much less talk about welles' actual work (hilites like kane and t3m excepted). so you trade the sequences where bogdanovich forces welles to talk about the camerawork in the trial for sequences like welles cursing out richard burton or rolling eyes at "little dusty hoffman" and of course

HJ: Bogdanovich called. He talked about--

OW: Wait! I'll tell you what he talked about: he talked about Bogdanovich!

[...]

HJ: Mask is about a boy born with a deformed face. He apparently picked this subject because the first play he took Dorothy [Stratten] to see was The Elephant Man. She identified with it, beause her great beauty was similar to the grotesque ugliness of the Elephant Man. In that the extremeness of each of them--extreme beauty and extreme ugliness--separated them from the common folk of the world.

OW: Shit!

which have their own pleasures obv. most valuable stuff for people who've already seen a lot of talk shows and pored over the other book is prob the transcriptions of their business talk, as jaglom hustles for him. a closer window than i'd had before into his late career.

he claims cecil b demille invented the fascist salute; idk if that one was out there before. "he had to think of something for all those extras to do, you know ... i've had arguments with historians about this, in rome. i say, you come back when you can prove to me everybody saluted like that."

the stuff on Reagan and Ike made me chuckle -- Orson, always after the big brass ring

jaglom forgets a name at some point and orson pounces: "you need reagan cards!"

and of course:

Houseman has had twenty commercials on camera. I’ve had one. I’m in terrible financial trouble…. If Wesson Oil would let me say that Wesson Oil is good, instead of Houseman, I’d be delighted, but nobody will take me for a commercial…. A real mystery: why they prefer Houseman, with his petulant, arrogant, unpleasant manner…. It’s a very weird and terrible situation. I don’t know where to turn… If I got just one commercial, it would change my life!… There is no “meantime.” It’s the grocery bill. I haven’t got the money. It’s that urgent…. Get me on that fuckin’ screen and my life is changed.

yeah the houseman nemesis stuff is black-comedy-worthy

I'm reading the daunting McGilligan bio. Merv Griffin reunited Houseman and Welles in the late '70s. They hugged, reminisced on set, walked their separate ways, and never saw watch other again.

man I gotta read this

OW such a bullshitter, he seemed to believe most of it tho.

I mentioned in the Vincent Price thread what a dreary late career Joseph Cotten had... At least Petulia is a real movie, but most everything after that seems to be dismal one-dimensional variations on same (Dr Phibes, Soylent Green, you name it). Funny I don't remember him in the TV film of A Delicate Balance with Kate Hepburn, gotta rewatch that...

in the McGilligan book Welles, who loved to flirt with men, soothes Griffin's hurt feelings after Orson reminds him that Cotten won't go on the show because "he doesn't like homos, you know.

yeah Christopher Isherwood had an incident w/ Cotten

maybe he hated most of us thinking that Jed Leland was a homo

Welles, who loved to flirt with men

"when i'm with homosexuals, i become a little homosexual, to make them feel at home, you know"

I knew OW and Micheál MacLiammóir had a fraught relationship dating back to OW's apprenticeship in Irish theater but didn't know OW spent one entire production flirting and leading on MacLiammóir's partner, who, of course, was the director.

His theatre mentor MacLiammoir (? Iago in that film) was pretty flamin'. xp

Anyway, I'm DRUNK.

MUST everything have to be about ORSON? Carol Reed weeps at this revive.

No -- I mean his stay in Ireland in 1932. MacLiammoir's partner directed Welles' first big break on stage.

These are good stories

These are good stories

These are good stories

Edited by Peter Biskind, America's foremost film historian

Saw this again last night...Checked my Letterboxd page and I didn't list this--it must be my favourite film that's not in my Top 100. I think I know someone who models her whole being on the Alida Valli character.

http://mistercomfypants.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/third-man-anna.png?w=450

this movie is a bit too 'easy' for JRo

Welles — who hated the Harry Lime character too much to have been able to make him palatable in a movie of his own — was turned by Korda, Greene, and Reed into such a charming monster that most moviegoers have preferred to remember him that way: Welles without his customary self-critique, playing the guiltless profiteer. Moreover, because this is one of Greene’s “entertainments,” we’re not shown any of the children in the Vienna hospital who’ve been treated with Lime’s diluted penicillin — unlike Martins, who’s taken there by a British officer (Trevor Howard) who correctly surmises that seeing the children will goad him into betraying his best friend. In other words, watered-down penicillin was actually sold on the Vienna black market during this period, but Greene was more interested in the effect of this on Martins than on the audience. “We had no desire to move people’s political emotions,” he wrote years later in his autobiography Ways of Escape. “We wanted to entertain them, to frighten them a little, even to make them laugh.”

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2016/04/welles-in-the-lime-light/

In the pub yesterday afternoon I got to watch the last 15-20 minutes, muted with subtitles. It was still a very thrilling, engaging and moving experience. Of course, I was drunk...

Er war gleich toten.
Er war gleich toten

Holly: You ever hear of 'The Lone Rider of Santa Fe'?
Calloway: Can't say as I have.
Holly
: 'Death at Double X Ranch,' uh, 'Raunch'

very popular, sir.

How long can one stay here on this stage money?

anything really wrong with your papers?

they're forged.

...why??

do you believe, mr. martins, in the stream of consciousness?

i said: where would you put mr. james joyce? in what caTEGory?

(you could ask him the same question about harry)

(punches Holly in the face) *do* be careful, sir.

^otm. thought about posting this myself

It WASN'T the German gin.

we should have dug deeper than a grave.

I don't think they'd look for a bullet wound after you'd hit that ground.

oh, the same old indigestion. these are the only things that help: these tablets. these are the last. can't get them anywhere in europe anymore.

Is that what you say to people after death? "Goodness, that's awkward"?

sorry for the gravediggers. hard work.

Paine. Paine.

i read a bit of it. looked as though it was going to be pretty good!

Look at yourself. They have a name for faces like that.

holly. what a silly name.

t's all right, Paine. He's only a scribbler with too much drink in him.

i'd say you're doing something pretty dangerous this time.

yes?

mixing fact and fiction.

should i make it all fact?

oh, no, mr. martins. i say stick to fiction. straight fiction.

i'm too far along with the book, mr. popesco.

haven't you ever scrapped a book?

never.

pity!

Mm, yes?

Showing at the nearest art cinema in a week or so - never seen it on the big screen.

...which I guess is for the 70th anniversary.

‘Twas good! There was a bit with a zither player beforehand, which was good - though some folks made annoyed noises as her discussing plot points when describing the piece of music. I had to get a bus so I couldn’t stay for the Q&A, though it didn’t interest me much.

pencil moustached Trevor Howard with his duffle coat on or that big fuckoff leather coat - such a cool look!

Yup

I noticed a lot more rats in the sewers on the big screen.

The shoulders on his jacket are something else xp

In a good print that jacket is very black, as in White Light/White Heat or Smell the Glove black.

showed this on the big screen (from blu) to my movie theater coworkers for my birthday this summer (also inland empire). otm about the rats. in fact the whole sewer sequence opened up for me-- always secretly found it prolonged and dull and this time i found it prolonged and riveting. the part where lime is surrounded by echoes emerging from like a dozen indistinguishable archways suddenly felt like a less ostentatious / more successful version of the mirrors at the end of lady from shanghai.

fave lil character etching these days: popescu, a monster.

the sewer looks like a ken adam set tbh, especially when dozens of people in white jumpsuits start rappelling into it.

Love those sewer entrances that fold up in triangles to reveal a staircase.

I couldn't get over how shocking the reveal was as a kid when i first saw this. Was it the first big he's-dead-no-he's-not type twist in the middle of a film ever? I'm sure it can't have been but..

oh, little things. how to put your temperature up before an exam. how to avoid this and that.

the dead are happier dead. they don't miss much here, poor devils.

XPS Laura did it a few years earlier, but it's spoiled a little since Tierney is the star.

A parrot bit me.

the qualities of this movie that stand out more over time as very "modern" in the best sense are the humor (which remains funny and sharp and incredibly well-timed and true to character), and conversely it's very realistic cold-bloodedness. Holly is a sort of typical Hollywood hero, a big talker, sentimental, a bit blustery in parts, but it's undercut by the fact his innocence and naivete have been and will be taken advantage of by his best friend, and later sharply pointed out by the woman he's in love with. and in a refreshing bit of business, the character of Anna isn't a particularly innocent, betrayed sort in need of rescuing. She doesn't want to be rescued, she's extremely cruel at points, and her love of Harry Lime remaining despite his crimes is a sign of something other than someone who has blinders on.

Was you ever stung by a dead bee?

Sorry, wrong thread

whenever i watch this w people who haven't seen it it always feels as if a moment's thought-- "but wait in this movie revolving entirely around the mysterious death of a character we've never seen, whom does orson welles play"-- would unravel the whole thing, but i've only seen it happen once before the cat nuzzles the shoes.

the humor of the vv cleverly hidden in plain sight story of Holly being roped into giving a talk about literature, from the point that Crabbin enters the scene w/his wife at the hotel, is so good.

her love of Harry Lime remaining despite his crimes is a sign of something other than someone who has blinders on.

otm-- in the last third of the movie her flat explanations for her loyalty are almost mystical-- "a person doesn't change because you find out more"-- and she is the element that allows this coming-of-age story to simultaneously cast itself as an imitation of holly's own (in the end it comes down to a white hat shooting a black hat) and a subversion of them (the shooting is the culmination of a lifelong friendship, holly will never again be able to divide the world into his old caTEGories, and he will certainly not ride into the sunset w the girl).

her acceptance of the "irrational" or "immoral" power of her own loyalty to him is also the symbol of this sad postapocalyptic consciousness the europeans are imagined in the movie to have about themselves

Crabbin enters the scene w/his wife

this is one in what is implied to be a succession of mistresses isn't it! maybe one of them is his wife. the one in this scene is the one he says "i can't very well introduce you to everybody" to tho i think.

he is always physically moving them away from other characters (and from the camera).

http://www.tedxnashville.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Ketch-Secor-2-of-28-1160x700.jpg

"I have a master's in Old Man Hat!"

Oops. Meant for the Ken Burns' thread.

Lol

Anna is annoying like unyielding people are; the film understands this.

She is definitely better done than the same character would have been in another movie. The story is that Graham Greene wanted a happy ending and Carol Reed nixed it, assume it has been discussed upthread.

I can recall either the Harry Lime theme or the Curb Your Enthusiasm music, but not both. If the wrong ones in my head I won’t find the other.

They go together like a horse and carriage... I have the same with Curb Theme and "Love & Marriage"

I saw this film recently, while I was on holiday, in Vienna, with a friend who is a little bit obsessed with the film. I knew the twist already (Orson Welles isn't dead!) which spoilered it a little, but the atmosphere of the film, its twists and turns and odd moral logic and dark humour, was still deeply compelling. One of the things that affected me most deeply, was the way that the strange, atmospheric, ruined city of Vienna (with its weird twisting baroque statues and its shortcuts and its sewers) itself seemed to be a character in the film, as much as any of the humans.

We visisted a lot of scenes from the film - Harry Lime's house where the 'accident' took place; the infamous door with its baroque tat; we even went down the sewers - of course there is a Third Man Tour, where they will pull up the weird triangular covers and take you down into those passages and sewers and buried rivers and sluices where they actually filmed it (rats and all). It's an amazing, magical place - the film does a pretty good job of conveying just how creepy those sewers are. However, they don't adequately capture the smell!

I have photos of a lot of the sites, including the sewers, if anyone is interested in seeing them? But if you are ever in Vienna and love the film, the sewer tour is a real treat.

not many cities you can say that about

Paris?

Would love to see those photos!

Love this film but I think I'd give a tour of the sewers a miss tbh.

playing crpgs in my formative years means i would go on a sewer tour like a shot even if this movie didn't exist

would love to visit the site of the "accident", that's so neat branwell. def post pics

Old man, you never should have gone to the poilce, you know.

My server tonight is named Callahan, and my first thought was not Clint Eastwood.

Calloway. I'm not Irish.

i don't want another murder in this case, and you were born to be murdered, so

:)

You can have any part you want, so long as you don't interfere...I have never cut you out of anything yet.

I never knew ye olde ILX before the war, with its sinister music, its 12ft lizards and poxy fules.

Harry, delete ILX plz

A few borad beefs, a few image bombz - why don’t you try and catch a real troll, Callahan?

_"I never knew the old Vienna before the war, with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm."_

Constantinople suited me better

still, good fellows, on the whole. did their best, you know.

Oh, Paine, Paine.

I like a good Western. That’s what I like about them, sir. You can pick them up and put them down anytime.

i’ve got them muddled

Vienna doesn't really look any worse than a lot of other European cities. Bombed about a bit.

all's well that ends well! ladies and gentlemen, i have much pleasure in introducing mr. holly martins, from the other side.

He's only a scribbler with too much drink in him. Take Mr. Holly home.

That's Mr Martins' little joke, of course. We all know perfectly well Zane Grey wrote what we call "westerns."

It wasn't for German gin.

We just watched an episode of Richard Ayoade's Travel Man where they do The Third Man tour and are underwhelmed. Hats off to whoever had the idea to turn the actual sewer system into a tourist trap.

I am annoyed that's not an actual quote from the film.

I like a good Western. That’s what I like about them, sir. You can pick them up and put them down anytime.

iirc there is a cut and change of location between the two halves of this line, implying payne has been enthusing cheerfully about westerns for an entire jeep ride

Have you, Sergeant? Author? Martins? Thank you, Sergeant.
☝🏻😗

lolllll

i can't very well introduce you to everybody.

Truly delightful character, responsible for one of the most clever tricks in cinema.

no! a major? did you really?

_I like a good Western. That’s what I like about them, sir. You can pick them up and put them down anytime._

iirc there is a cut and change of location between the two halves of this line, implying payne has been enthusing cheerfully about westerns for an entire jeep ride

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Sacher

Mr. Crabbin?

Once when I was hard up I sold some tyres on the black market.

Even at the end his thoughts were of you.

What's the use of another post-mortem?

On, pinning things on girls now!

Hilda!
Ja?
Führen Sie den Herrn herein!

some ice for mr. martins!

Am I wrong in thinking that for some movies, excessive quoting drains the life from them, but not this one?

By some I mean most.

I watched this with my 12 yo and we got to the last scene where the leaves are falling and Anna walks by Holly without acknowledging him and I started laughing…my kid looked at me strangely and I told him he’d understand when he’s older

you found out my little secret. a man must live.

Damn that scene is so sad!!!!

sometimes he said i laughed too much

I had my eye on this thread when thinking about watching this tomorrow.

Holly Martins: the dunciest dunce who ever dunced

Great write up above Alfred.

Long goodbye really ripped this off didn't it? Uber-righteous friend tries to help out pal who ends up just wanting to screw him over; complicated love-interest involved

Thank you!

No need to worry about spoilers for a movie more than 20 years old; that's my rule in class at any rate.

Ah but there's still bums like me around who benefit from them, not that I hold it against anyone with a differing philosophy

H.P., that's interesting! The final shot of Long Goodbye is very similar as well, to the point where it seems like it has to be an intentional homage or at least a wink for those in the know.