The Third Man (1949) - The Criterion Collection

Synopsis

Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, black-market opportunist Harry Lime—and thus begins this legendary tale of love, deception, and murder. Thanks to brilliant performances by Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, and Orson Welles; Anton Karas’s evocative zither score; Graham Greene’s razor-sharp dialogue; and Robert Krasker’s dramatic use of light and shadow, The Third Man, directed by the inimitable Carol Reed, only grows in stature as the years pass.

Cast

Harry Lime	Orson Welles
Anna Schmidt	Alida Valli
Major Calloway	Trevor Howard
Kurtz	Ernst Deutsch
Holly Martins	Joseph Cotten
Porter	Paul Hoerbiger
Dr. Winkel	Erich Ponto

Credits

Director	Carol Reed
Producer	Carol Reed
Screenplay	Graham Greene
Cinematography	Robert Krasker
Presented by	Alexander Korda and David O. Selznick
Assistant director	Guy Hamilton
Editing	Oswald Hafenrichter
Associate producer	Hugh Perceval
Music	Anton Karas
Sets	Vincent Korda

Disc Features

AVAILABLE IN BOTH DOUBLE-DVD AND BLU-RAY EDITIONS:

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
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Blu-ray edition includes a booklet featuring an essay by Luc Sante
Double-DVD set includes Sante’s essay as well as pieces by Charles Drazin and Philip Kerr

From the Current

Linklater’s Other Orson Welles Tribute

Nov 25, 2009

CITIZEN AND FATHER

Nov 11, 2009

When one thinks of Orson Welles, one can’t help but imagine a genius alone, monolithic—an image perhaps fostered by his greatest creation, the colossus Citizen Kane. Yet as the new book In My Father’s Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles, by his eldest . . .

GREENE’S CRITICAL MOMENT

Sep 3, 2009

Around these parts, Graham Greene is best known as the brilliant British novelist who also wrote the screenplays for Carol Reed’s The Fallen Idol and The Third Man. But even before he made film history with those unforgettable classics, he was writing about the state of contemporary . . .

The Criterion Collection
Goes High Definition!

Dec 15, 2008

Critics have had our debut Blu-ray releases for weeks, and the word is out, coast to coast: http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2008/11 . . .

PRESS NOTES: SEEING BLU

Dec 11, 2008

Criterion Blu-ray editions debut next week—with Chungking Express, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bottle Rocket, and The Third Man—and the reviews are already coming in. “Chungking Express, Criterion’s first Blu-ray release, is nothing short of magnificent,” say the folks at . . .

The Third Man: The One and Only . . .

by Luc Sante May 21, 2007

The Third Man (1949) is one of that handful of motion pictures (Rashomon, Casablanca, The Searchers) that have become archetypes—not merely a movie that would go on to influence myriad other movies but a construct that would lodge itself deep in the unconscious of an enormous number . . .

Behind The Third Man

by Charles Drazin May 21, 2007

In January 1948, British film producer Sir Alexander Korda, head of British-Lion and London Film Productions, commissioned novelist Graham Greene to write and research “an original postwar continental story to be based on either or both of the following territories: Vienna, Rome.” The resulting . . .

The Third Man: Seeing Greene

by Philip Kerr May 21, 2007

In The Third Man, Holly Martins, an alcoholic American writer of “cheap novelettes” (Oklahoma Kid and The Lone Rider of Santa Fe, among others) and a man who was “born to be murdered,” arrives in the Vienna of 1949 to take up a job offered him by his childhood friend Harry . . .

The Third Man

by Michael Wilmington Nov 8, 1999

In The Third Man—probably the greatest British thriller of the postwar era—director Carol Reed and screenwriter Graham Greene set a fable of moral corruption in a world of near-Byzantine visual . . .