Three times a week, in one of the oldest cinemas in Vienna, a classic British film continues to delight audiences 75 years after it was first released.
The Third Man (1949) is a film noir set in Post-War Vienna – the cities ruined grandeur and maze of shadowy streets providing the stage for a set of even more shadowy characters.
Why is it still so loved?
The script (adapted from a Graham Greene novella), the exceptional actors, the unforgettable and highly unusual musical score, the back and white cinematography that captures it all… and finally, for a film about cynicism, it leaves you feeling strangely joyful, at its artistic audacity and black humour:
“After all, it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 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 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
