PERHAPS it’s the exotic chime of the zither that drives The Third Man’s unforgettable earworm of a theme tune along so quirkily that makes the film so magical, or maybe it’s the smirk its ‘star’ Orson Welles affects as he finally emerges from the Viennese shadows to steal the show from under Joseph Cotton’s grumpy nose - Welles is only on screen for a measly 15 minutes of director Carol Reed’s 104-minute moody masterpiece, yet it’s still his name that is forever evoked whenever the 1949 film is mentioned.
Alternatively, it might be the seedy post-war underworld that novelist and screenwriter Graham Greene captured so beautifully - filled as it is with opportunistic chancers like Harry Lime, out to make a quick buck while society is still trying to find its feet - that keeps audiences coming back to The Third Man.
Whatever that magical ingredient is, it’s safe to say the film still exerts a hefty pull for cinema buffs the world over a full 75 years since it first appeared.
To mark this significant birthday for one of the most enigmatic, atmospheric and downright entertaining films in British cinema history, the QFT in Belfast is giving it a rare outing on the big screen from today and it’s quite simply not to be missed.
Story-wise, The Third Man is a relatively simple affair: a writer of pulpy Western novels by the name of Holly Martins (played to tetchy perfection by Joe Cotton) arrives in post-war Vienna to catch up with an old friend, Harry Lime (Welles), but soon finds out that his old pal has been killed in a street accident.
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When he meets the Chief of British Military Police in Vienna (played with his usual urbane charm by Trevor Howard), he also learns that Lime was in fact a ruthless black marketeer wanted by the authorities for peddling fake penicillin on the city streets. Holly decides to prove his friend’s innocence - but is the shady Harry Lime really dead at all?
It was a troubled production in many ways: Cotton was in the midst of a marriage break-up and self-medicating with alcohol, which doubtless made him bond with Howard and the great Bernard Lee, who played Howard’s decent sidekick, Sergeant Paine. While Cotton was told to knock the drinking on the head, no such orders were made of Howard and Lee, who spent much of the production permanently plastered.
Then there’s the small issue of the notoriously truculent Welles, a man not known for making a film’s production ever run smoothly. Welles weighed in whenever he felt like it, and famously objected to being asked to shoot in Vienna’s sewers - despite the fact that the Wien river ran through them which made them possibly the cleanest in Europe at the time. Refusing to work in “such filthy conditions” ensured that replica sewers had to be constructed back in Shepperton studios especially for him.
Despite the Diva diversions, Reed crafted a film unlike anything in British cinema before or since. See it the way it was intended this week.
The Third Man is showing at QFT Belfast until September 19, tickets and times via queensfilmtheatre.com
