Boring

Best movie ever!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

I must say , after 30 minutes from the beginning , I slept , and I continued watching it the next day just to know , why is this on the top rated movies !? and why this movie won an oscar award ! for what !? for the boring story !? or for the stupid music !? a total waste of time . I warn all of you . skip it !!.

Pretty much everything to love about film noir, just set in the crumbling ruins of post-war Vienna. There's something very off- kilter about "The Third Man", which is why I love it. The dutch angles, chiaroscuro lighting and (maybe best of all), that score. I don't think I've heard the zither elsewhere since first watching this movie, and the main theme hasn't left my head since. It's merry, haunting, catchy and altogether unusual, which is why it goes so well with this film. We're talking' John Williams memorable.But getting down to the business of the actual movie, I can't recommend it highly enough. And even though it's a "film school" movie, you tend to find yourself getting sucked into the story and mood. The cast is excellent (with Orson Welles enjoying a movie-stealing opportunity), the structure is superb, and the hype is entirely justified. 9/10

An example from the classic era of film noir. Director Carol Reed introduces us to post-war Vienna filled with harsh angles, Gothic shadows, lonely streets and gleaming streetlamps. Pulp novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives to the city looking for a job his good friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) has promised him. Immediately upon arrival he finds out that Lime has been run over by a car. Police think it a simple accident, but Martins has other ideas.Reed is a known expressionist and this shows heavily in the film. Dutch angles fill almost every shot and a lot of time is given for the buildup and the atmosphere of the city. And the film is to be praised for this. Many of the shots seem eerily familiar to the viewer. Not because you've seen the film but because so many later directors and cinematographers have been influenced by it. The shot of Lime's shadow looming against a wall as he slowly approaches is a fine, fine piece of film making and the most iconic the film has.Eerily familiar also describes the story to a tee, but in this case that is not a compliment. The plot is fairly easy to predict, despite of it containing some pretty clever twists. I can only imagine how revolutionary a film such as this one must have seemed like back on its day. But now, as someone who has watched so many other similar films... Well, it honestly makes the film something of a bore. I can appreciate it visually and the actors are extremely talented, but the story didn't leave me with much.And this is honestly the problem with a lot of mid-century films. At least for yours truly. There is something to be said about being one of the first to do something. But if that thing continues to be done better and better throughout the years, is it okay, at some point, to let the first examples go. Am I doing this film and others like it a disservice by not having seen them earlier when I would have been more able to appreciate them?Perhaps. Or perhaps history and time march on, like they always do. Nevertheless, it's a fine film. Very well made, very well acted. And the story is a good one. The fact that it has been made again so many times since then is a testament to that.

I first watched this film in the 1975, on TV, and I sang its famous zither theme for days, to the point of annoying my parents and siblings. I was 18, I loved it, and I was over the moon when I was finally able to buy a VHS copy in 1989, which I keep, and to which I have added a DVD release and the Criterion release, certainly the finest and most perfectly cleaned up version so far.At 18, I was instantly overawed by the music and, perhaps most of all, by the haunting B&W photography, with the long shadows, the war-bitten faces protruding from windows, the cobblestone streets shimmering in the dark, the exquisitely filmed ruins contrasting with some luxurious interiors and embroidered building facades, and myriad other wonderful details that keep surprising me. The documentary-like short preamble of a war-ravaged Vienna is a gem in its own right and sets the high standard for the rest of the film.I have also been consistently astounded by the quality of the acting. Trevor Howard and Cotten are superlative; Welles, in a much smaller part, stays with you forever; and that trio is superbly supported by Valli, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Bernard Lee, Paul Horbiger (memorable as the porter who wonders whether Lime went to heaven or hell), and Siegfried Breuer, the sophisticated Romanian heavy with the threatening smile, accompanied by a gallery of human gargoyles. In truth, apart from a nurse clutching a teddy bear at a children's hospital, I cannot think of anyone in the film who does not perform at the highest level.The dialogue is wonderful beyond words, punctuated by humorous moments, involving British vs American pronunciation of the word "ranch," the fact that Martins writes cowboy books which a British Army sergeant avidly reads, a cat, a parrot, a cuckoo clock, the wonderful scene where Hyde-White mistakes Martins for a "serious" writer, resulting in a comic sequence where Martins fears for his life only to be left at the mercy of intellectuals who pump him on stream of consciousness, while consciousness for him is the presence of killers, the whole sequence punctuated with apparently harmless and jocund remarks redolent with fine irony. The renowned scene with Cotten and Welles on the Prater Wheel shows two Americans crossing paths, supposed friends who are actually incompatible (Lime used to steal Martins' girlfriends, but the latter never thought much of that). Martins is like the lawmen in his cowboy books, looking for honesty and respect for the law, while Lime wades in the murky waters of contraband. One also suspects that Lime had Martins in mind to become the victim, when he invited him to Vienna. But Martins metamorphoses from dreamy cowboy to down-to-earth restorer of the law, and by the time Lime realizes his error in judgment, he has the law on his tail, and there is something rat-like about his face as he hides and runs in the limey sewers of Vienna.Despite the classic trimmings, the script is incredibly advanced for its time. The action sequences are totally credible, brilliantly shot, and include the famous Vienna sewers chase sequence, certainly a masterful example of how to pull off a blend of sublime photography, top acting, and dramatic surroundings.Welles is known for the cuckoo clock contribution and he is also believed to have given valuable advice to Director Carol Reed. Certainly, the film bears a few photographic resemblances to CITIZEN KANE, and it is a collaborative effort with everyone in exceptional form, right up to the majestic final sequence where Martins receives the ultimate kissoff from Valli.THE THIRD MAN remains the greatest movie experience of my life, and may I live long enough to watch it many more times. 10/10 only because the system does not allow me to give it 20/10.