The Third Man (1949)
Carol Reed
Can you complete this film quote? “In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The _______ _____.” To find out the rest of this famous quote, you will have to come to the second screening in Think Transatlantic film series!
Carol Reed’s 1949 film noir classic, The Third Man, is the story of Holly Martins, a pulp fiction writer who travels to postwar Vienna after a childhood friend, Harry Lime, offers him a job. When Martins arrives in Vienna, he discovers that Lime was killed in a car accident. But soon it becomes clear that Harry Lime’s death was no accident when Martins becomes entangled in the seedy black market intrigue of postwar Vienna. The Third Man has been included on many critics’ list of the greatest films of all time. It stars Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard. It runs about 104 min.
Restricted to UW students, faculty, and staff.