the m0vie blog

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Neasa Hardiman, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.

This time, Carol Reed’s The Third Man.

Holly Martins arrives in Vienna to visit his old friend Harry Lime. However, Holly quickly discovers that all is not what it seems. Harry apparently died in a freak traffic accident shortly before Harry arrived. As British officers start asking pointed questions about the dead man, Holly becomes increasingly anxious that something has gone very wrong.

At time of recording, it was ranked 177th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Show Notes:

• Recorded 12th August 2020.
• Note: Due to the COVID-19 situation, this episode was recorded remotely. We suspect, going forward that a lot of our episodes will be until the crisis resolves.
• Note: Due to some technical hitches, there were problems recording both Andrew and Neasa’s audio tracks. As a result, the podcast has been restored from a back-up. The audio quality might be a little rougher around the edge than we’d like.
• Note: A bit flustered due to time constraints, Darren incorrectly identifies The Lives of Harry Lime as Where in the World is Harry Lime? We apologise for this error, even if it is a catchy title.
• The Third Man at The Internet Movie Database.
• The IMDB Top 250 as it appeared at time of recording.
• Follow Neasa on Twitter.
• Visit Neasa on her website.
• Sea Fever at The Internet Movie Database.
• Roger Ebert reviews The Third Man for The Chicago Sun Times, December 1996.
• Sheena Scott at Forbes celebrates The Third Man, September 2019.
• BBC News reports on the British Film Institute naming The Third Man the best British film of all time, September 1999.
• Matthew Thrift at the BFI on the German Trümmerfilm genre, April 2017.
• Philip French at The Guardian contextualises The Third Man as part of the Trümmerfilm movement, August 2015.
• Elaine Lennon at Off Screen offers a brief introduction to The Third Man, December 2016.
• Simon Callow at The Guardian discusses some of the back story behind the development of The Third Man, February 2006.
• Michael Korda offers a remembrance of Graham Greene for The New Yorker, March 1996.
• Graham Greene writes a preface to his novelisation of The Third Man for The New York Times, March 1950.
• Tom Graham at Little White Lies praises Graham Greene as one of cinema’s great writers, April 2016.
• Bram Stoker’s Dracula: The Novel of the Film, by Fred Saberhagen and James V. Hart, 1992.
• The Guardian reviews The Third Man, September 1949.
• Bosley Crowther reviews The Third Man in The New York Times, February 1950.
• Richard Brody review The Third Man for The New Yorker, June 2015.
• Jonathan Rosenbaum at jonathanrosenbaum.net on America’s strange relationship to The Third Man, August 2018.
• Michael Winner writes in The Independent as The Third Man as an alternative to film school, October 1994.
• Matt Zoller Seitz writes at RogerEbert.com about the joys of The Third Man, June 2015.
• Adam Scovell at Little White Lies tours the Vienna of The Third Man, September 2019.
• Graham Greene: The Dangerous Edge, by Judith Adamson, 1990.
• Martin Scorsese writes at The Independent about the power of The Third Man, June 2015.
• Richard Raskin at P.o.V. on the power of the closing shot in The Third Man, November 1996.
• Carol Reed discusses directing Orson Welles in Encountering Directors by Charles Thomas Samuels, 1972.
• Angela Allen talks to the BFI about the production of The Third Man, September 2019.
• Jimmy Stamp at The Smithsonian on the origins of the cuckoo clock, May 2013.
• Nick Squires at The Telegraph on the history of the Swiss Guard, November 2011.
• Oliver Lyttelton at IndieWire offers some behind the scenes trivia on The Third Man, April 2012.
• The Los Angeles Times reports on Robert Mitchum’s infamous “reefer bust”, September 1948.
• William Cook at The Guardian on the vision of Vienna presented in The Third Man, December 2006.
• France24 on the complicated relationship that Vienna has with The Third Man, September 2019.
• Michael Wilmington offers a brief introduction to The Third Man for Criterion, November 1999.
• Camilo C. Antonio at The Vienna Review on the importance of the zither to the sound of The Third Man, December 2009.
• The New York Times on the unease Catholicism of Graham Greene, April 1983.
• Giles Fodden at The Irish Times on the complicated relationship between Graham Greene and the cinema, January 2000.
• Ron Rosenbaum reflects on the life and times of Kim Philby for The New York Times, July 1994.
• Ian Thompson at The Financial Times on the echoes of Graham Greene and Kim Philby to be found in The Third Man, August 2019.
• Ron Rosenbaum at The Observer on the shadow that Kim Philby casts over The Third Man, January 2000.
• Michael Tomasky at CBS News on the lingering moral dilemma posed by E.M. Forster, July 2005.
• Phuong Le at Film Comment on The Lives of Harry Lime, June 2015.
• Darren Richman at The Independent celebrates Mr. Arkadin, May 2017.
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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: america, austria, british cinema, carol reed, cowboys, expressionism, Film noir, films, Movies, neasa hardiman, podcast, review, second world war, the third man, Trümmerfilm, vienna, western |