Review: The Third Man
The Restored DVD and the Books
DVD: Carol Reed's THE THIRD MAN (1949)
New transfer with digitally restored image and sound
Publisher: The Criterion Collection (Janus Films & Home Vision Cinema), 1999
BOOK: IN SEARCH OF THE THIRD MAN
By Charles Drazin
Publisher: Limelight Editions (Proscenium), 2000, 224 pages, paperback
BOOK: THE THIRD MAN
By Graham Greene
The original "treatment" upon which the film is based
Publisher: Penguin USA, 1999, 160 pages, paperback
Also see: The Third Man in the German Classroom - from your Guide
This review pertains to both the restored DVD version of The Third Man and two books related to the film. It is also related to my article on using these materials in the German classroom or for individual study.
The Third Man has always been one of my movie favorites, an opinion shared by many film critics and devoted movie fans. The British Film Institute recently ranked The Third Man at the top of its list of the 100 best British films of all time. The American Film Institute placed it at 57 on the AFI 100 list, ranking The Third Man below many lesser Hollywood films (perhaps because Americans never saw the director's original edit?). With the crisply restored Criterion Collection DVD version, viewers will come to appreciate this British-American film classic even more (and to further question the AFI's sanity). As far as I'm concerned, the British got the ranking right, and the fact that the only Oscar® that Carol Reed's film ever received was for cinematography reflects poorly on the Academy.
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THE THIRD MAN 50th Anniversary Edition Criterion DVD Features |
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• New digital transfer • Digitally restored image and sound • Audio of Graham Greene's treatment (novel) • Video introduction by Peter Bogdanovich • Audio: Third Man on radio • Alternate UK & US intros • Production notes and rare photos • Footage of composer Anton Karas at zither • Original trailers • English subtitles for deaf/hearing-impaired > Third Man: Criterion DVD |
The Criterion DVD edition was released for the 50th anniversary of Carol Reed's classic film in 1999. The new digital transfer offers the first opportunity in many decades to view this classic film noir in the quality it deserves. Earlier VHS video versions suffered from flaws that have been corrected in the new Criterion DVD with its digitally restored images and sound.
Since The Third Man was a joint British-American production, there are actually two different versions of the film. Hollywood co-producer David O. Selznick had the American rights and, based on audience surveys, felt that U.S. audiences would not accept some aspects of the film. As a result, he altered parts of Carol Reed's original British edit. Besides trimming about eleven minutes (in an effort to make the American lead character more sympathetic), Selznick also replaced the British introductory narration (read by director Carol Reed) with an American version read by Joseph Cotten. The Criterion DVD offers the opportunity to compare the two, and besides Cotten's first-person American narration, viewers will notice that Selznick also deleted a line or two from the British version in order to make the central character of Holly Martins (Cotten) seem less cynical and more likeable.
I had never seen the British version before viewing the Criterion DVD transfer. In my opinion Selznick's revised American introduction is inferior to Carol Reed's original. Viewing the two different versions of the film's introduction also clearly shows the dramatic difference in image quality between the restored British version and the unrestored U.S. version.
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FILM TRIVIA Der dritte Mann |
| • Name Confusion: Which three characters' names in The Third Man keep getting mixed up or abused? • Bernard Lee plays Sergeant Paine. What very famous role did he later play in a series of films? • Ernst Deutsch, the Austrian actor who plays Baron Kurtz, was born Ernest Dorian (in Prague) and used that name for the credits in six Hollywood films of the 1940s. He began his film career in 1916. > Trivia Details |
Besides the stunning digital transfer itself, one of the best features of the Criterion 50th anniversary DVD version is the supplemental section on the making of the film, based on Charles Drazin's book In Search of the Third Man. In fact, the production history of The Third Man is as interesting as the film itself. Through text commentary and archival stills on the DVD, you learn that The Third Man was truly an Anglo-American coproduction, with Hollywood's David O. Selznick contributing his strong opinions and stars Joseph Cotten and Alida Valli. While British director Carol Reed had wanted James Stewart as the central character of Holly Martins (Cotten; Cary Grant was also considered for the role), and Selznick pushed for Noel Coward as the villain (Orson Welles), neither got his way.
Many of the key characters in the movie are played by Austrian and German actors. Anna Schmidt, the beautiful femme fatale in The Third Man, is played by Alida Valli. The Italian-born, multilingual actress, whose real name is Alida Maria Laura von Altenburger, was the daughter of an Austrian father (from Trento) and an Italian mother. At the time The Third Man was in production, Valli (her one-name billing in many films) happened to be under contract to Selznick in Hollywood, and she joined the talented cast that included Orson Welles (as Harry Lime), Trevor Howard (as Major Calloway) and Bernard Lee (as Sgt. Paine). The DVD features still photos of the cast and crew in Vienna and at the Shepperton Studios as part of the text-and-image "making of" supplement.
The digitally restored soundtrack on the Criterion DVD becomes a solid benefit when listening to the Austrian German in the film. It's difficult enough trying to understand the German without the typical pops, crackling and hiss of an old optical soundtrack. (See our worksheets for the text of the German dialogues.) But Criterion did not stop there. One of the DVD's marvelous extra features shows in amazing detail the magic done by digitally cleaning up over 22,000 film frames. The tonal quality and gray-scale of the five-decades-old film print are suberb, displaying the classic black-and-white film noir images (for which cinematographer Robert Krasker won an Academy Award) in all their glory.
An additional treat on this DVD is the alternate audio track which allows viewers to select either the original soundtrack or a reading of Graham Greene's treatment in preparation for the final film script. I found it amazing how closely Greene's written words follow the events in the film. You can read more about this in my review of Greene's book. See the "Features" box above for more of the DVD's extras, including a featurette on the Austria zither player Anton Karas.
N E X T > Review: In Search of the Third Man
M O R E > Review: The Third Man Book
> The Third Man in the German Classroom
> The Third Man on the Web
Top German DVDs and Videos
Your Guide's ranked selection of the top ten German films on DVD or video.
Compare Prices for the DVD version of The Third Man. (I highly recommend the Criterion DVD version.)
German Book of Third Man
Von Graham Greene. Bestellen Sie das Buch von Amazon.de.
Related Pages
The Third Man in the German Classroom
The first part of an article by your Guide. The WHAT, WHY and HOW for using the film for German instruction.
All Third Man Dialogs
The contents page with links to all of the current Third Man German dialogues and worksheets.
The Third Man Trivia & Goofs
Fun with The Third Man.
The Third Man on the Web
Web links for The Third Man and Der dritte Mann.
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