The Third Man - Criterion Collection (2-Disc Edition)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Hedwig Bleibtreu, Leo Bieber, Martin Boddey, Nelly Arno, Siegfried BreuerBrand: Image Entertainment
Cinematographer: Robert Krasker
Composer: Anton Karas
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); German (Original Language); Russian (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, Dolby, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 104 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-05-22
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion Collection
Movie Reviews of The Third Man - Criterion Collection (2-Disc Edition)
Movie Review: In my top 10 films ever made
Summary: 5 Stars
I grew up in Germany in that time and a similar place where this movie is set. From the stories that I was told about the black market, and from what I saw as a child, this movie captures the time and the place perfectly.
The story, acting and camera work are all excellent. I have given this movie as a present more than once. I never lend out my copy.
Summary of The Third Man - Criterion Collection (2-Disc Edition)
Cynical 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 haunting deep focus shots off-kilter angles and dramatic use of light and shadow The Third Man directed by the inimitable Carol Reed only grows in stature as the years pass. System Requirements:Running Time: 104 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 715515023429 Manufacturer No: CC1690DDVDThere have been few better movies in the history of the planet than The Third Man, and fewer still as brilliantly directed from second to second. Orson Welles played the title role, and his legend has tended to engulf the film. But it was directed by Carol Reed and written--except for a Wellesian riff on the Borgias--by Graham Greene, and the credit for this masterpiece is properly theirs. Theirs and Joseph Cotten's; for awesome as Welles is, his Citizen Kane second banana is onscreen about six times as much, and Cotten uses every minute to create one of the most distinctive--if also forlorn--of modern heroes.
You know the story. Holly Martins (Cotten), a writer of pulp Westerns and one of life's congenital third-raters, arrives in post-WWII Vienna only to learn that his old pal Harry Lime, the guy who sent him his plane ticket, is being buried. Everybody, from a cynical British cop named Calloway (Trevor Howard) to Harry's Continental knockout of a girlfriend (Alida Valli) and his sundry absurd/Euro-sinister business associates, feels that Holly should get on another plane and go home. He doesn't. Things come to light. Other deaths follow. The world lies in utter ruin.
The Third Man completed a sublime hat trick--an international critical and popular smash following upon the success of Reed's Odd Man Out ('47) and The Fallen Idol ('48). Although other filmmakers had begun to use war-ravaged Europe as a great movie set, The Third Man is so vivid in its canny mix of gray semidocumentary and insanely angular, Expressionist/Surrealist chiaroscuro that it seems to have imagined not only the postwar thriller but also postwar Europe itself singlehandedly.
What great movie moments: The throwaway details like a mourner who forgets to drop his wreath on a newly dug grave. The sly editing whereby thick-headed Sergeant Paine (Bernard Lee, once and future "M" to 007) goes on leafing through a magazine, knowing just the moment he must rise and subdue the nervy Yank who would take a punch at his boss. The way Anton Karas's legendary zither score seems to jangle in the very guy-lines of a bridge where, far below Robert Krasker's Oscar-winning camera, the Third Man calls a war council. The shadow of a dead man towering, big as Europe, over the nighttime streets of Vienna. --Richard T. Jameson
The fractured Europe post-World War II is perfectly captured in Carol Reed's masterpiece thriller, set in a Vienna still shell-shocked from battle. Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) is an alcoholic pulp writer come to visit his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles). But when Cotton first arrives in Vienna, Lime's funeral is under way. From Lime's girlfriend and an occupying British officer, Martins learns of allegations of Lime's involvement in racketeering, which Martins vows to clear from his friend's reputation. As he is drawn deeper into postwar intrigue, Martins finds layer under layer of deception, which he desperately tries to sort out. Welles's long-delayed entrance in the film has become one of the hallmarks of modern cinematography, and it is just one of dozens of cockeyed camera angles that seem to mirror the off-kilter postwar society. Cotten and Welles give career-making performances, and the Anton Karas zither theme will haunt you. --Anne Hurley
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