Third Man, The (reissue)

Stars: Joseph Cotten, (Alida) Valli, Trevor Howard, Orson Welles, Barnard Lee, Paul Hoerbiger, Wilfrid Hyde White, Eric Pohlmann

Director: Carol Reed

A chance for younger filmgoers to make acquaintance with Orson Welles's last great 1940s role, as Harry Lime, master criminal at large in a post-war Vienna of fairs and ruins, shapes and shadows.

They seek him here, they seek him there. Lime is presumed dead, but there can be fewer older cinemagoers who don't know that (in one of the most telling shots in the film) he turns out to be alive, and ultimately pursued through the sewers of the city by Cotten, Howard, Lee and Anton Karas's insistent zither music, which hooked itself into the minds of the world.

Cotten plays Holly Martins, a writer who arrives in Vienna to be told that his friend Harry Lime has been killed in a street accident and that he was mixed up in drug-dealing.

Holly meets Anna (Valli), Lime's mistress, a frightened lady with forged papers, and finally Lime himself, who proves unrepentant and indifferent to his life of crime.

Despite Reed's masterly direction and the charismatic playing of Welles, it's the use of light and dark, shape and shade, tilted cameras and unusual angles (cinematographer Robert Krasker deservedly won an Academy Award) that helps to give the film its unique identity. Krasker's menacing use of darkness to outline the set features of a character-full group of European actors who largely make up the supporting cast emphasises both their hostility and the seeming hopelessness of Cotten's quest to find his former friend in an unfamiliar city full of hidden danger.

Head and shoulders above Hollywood 'noir' films of the 1940s, you should not miss the chance to see this one on a big screen.

David Quinlan

UK 1949. UK Distributor: Studio Canal (originally British Lion). Black and white.
104 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: PG.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 0, Swearing 0.

Review date: 11 Sep 2024