The Third Man turns 75 this September, having premiered in a small Hastings cinema on 1st September 1949. To mark the
occasion, the film has been newly restored in 4K and will return to UK
cinemas on September 6th, followed by a 4K UHD collector's edition later
this year.
Directed by Carol Reed and written by Graham Greene,
The Third Man stars Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, a writer
who travels to post-war Vienna at the invite of his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles). When he's told that harry is dead, Holly smells a rat and begins his
own investigation to uncover the truth.
The atmospheric use of black and white expressionist cinematography and
tilted-angled camerawork by Robert Krasker, for which he won an
Oscar, combined with the iconic hit theme music by
Anton Karas performed on the zither, memorably evoke the noir
thriller atmosphere of The Third Man, voted by the British Film Institute as the greatest British film of all
time. The encounter on the Ferris Wheel and the ensuing Cuckoo Clock
speech has become one of the most famous scenes in cinema history.
Check out the new trailer and poster below.
The official synopsis reads:
Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), an American writer of pulp Westerns, arrives in a bombed-out, post-war Vienna at the invitation of his childhood friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to find him recently dead. His suspicions are raised after learning of a ‘third man’ present at the time of Harry’s death, and butting up against interference from British police officer Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) and falling head-over-heels for Harry’s grief-stricken lover Anna (Alida Valli).
