The Vienna depicted in Carol Reed’s The Third Man no longer exists. It is a maze of sewers, back alleys, political gamesmanship, and lies. Nothing remains except for abandoned bourgeois flats, decrepit buildings and an amusement park devoid of any children. The city is chopped into quadrants controlled by the victorious World Powers following the aftermath of World War II. There are the rich and the poor and no one in between. The rich either have political connections or have the audacity to cheat their way into the higher echelons of society. The poor make due by keeping their mouths shut and letting the corrupt and powerful walk all over them. 1949 Vienna is a city you want don’t to visit – unless you’re Holly Martins and on a mission to find your lost friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles).
Director Carol Reed and cinematographer Robert Krasker keep the audience off balance. The camera is almost always at a tilt (Dutch angle) and the shadows convey a menace that will swallow you up. Reed and Krasker give us a Vienna that is a deadly Wonderland. Holly is the naïve Alice following the White Rabbit of Harry Lime down the rabbit hole of Vienna. There is no firm ground and even bellow the street of the Austrian city lays a network of sewers. The Third Man is a bundle of string that takes pure delight in unraveling for its audience.
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