The Third Man (1949) on Netflix
Holly Martins writes Western pulp novels and arrives in Allied-occupied Vienna to work for Harry Lime. He learns that Lime is dead, and a porter tells him of a third man.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Holly Martins writes Western pulp novels and comes to Allied-occupied Vienna for a job that Harry Lime, a friend from childhood, has offered him. He learns that a car struck Lime in the street and killed him. At the funeral Martins meets Sergeant Paine and Major Calloway of the British field security section. Kurtz, a friend of Lime, says that he and Popescu carried Lime aside, and that Lime asked them to look after Martins and Anna Schmidt, Lime's girlfriend. Martins and Anna find that the accounts disagree about whether Lime spoke and how many men moved him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Third Man (1949)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
During the shooting of The Third Man, producer David O. Selznick and director Carol Reed argued over the final scene. Selznick wanted the novella's happy ending where Martins and Anna walk away arm-in-arm, but Reed refused to end on what he considered an artificially happy note.- Assistant director Guy Hamilton recalled that Orson Welles generally annoyed everyone on the set of The Third Man. Welles's temporary absence forced Hamilton to double for him, and Welles's complaints about shooting in the actual sewers led to those scenes being moved to UK studios.
- Graham Greene said that the famous "cuckoo clock" speech in The Third Man was written by Orson Welles himself. Greene noted that during shooting, an extra sentence was needed for timing.
- Director Carol Reed met zither player Anton Karas by chance at a Vienna party and brought him to London to compose the score for The Third Man. Karas worked with Reed for six weeks and stayed at Reed's house.
- To complete The Third Man, director Carol Reed ran four separate camera units around Vienna and worked around the clock, using Benzedrine to stay awake.
- The American release of The Third Man cut eleven minutes and replaced Carol Reed's voice-over with narration by Joseph Cotten. Producer David O. Selznick ordered the change because he thought American audiences wouldn't relate to the original's seedy tone.
- A 2012 US Supreme Court ruling in Golan v. Holder took The Third Man back out of the public domain in the United States and made it fully copyrighted again, along with other films like The 39 Steps.
