the third man cinematography analysis
In Third Man director Carol Reed has used many Noir- tropes like stark shadows, extensive night scenes, a confused protagonist and tilted camera angles. The Spiral Staircase is an American film noir psychological thriller, which is centred on a plentifully symbolic set of twisted stairs. In the climactic sequence of the film, the idea of a labyrinth is taken even further through the sewers. Krasker’s shots avoid the inclusion of the statue of Emperor Joseph II, the absence of which is a strong parallel to the absence of Harry Lime, and subsequently of the third man. It was a little trick, you know. Although the producer wanted a story about the occupation of Vienna, he was willing to allow the author to trace Harry and see where it would lead him. When it came to the role of the elusive Harry, Reed wanted none other than Orson Welles to take it on, but Selznick stopped him in his tracks yet again—deeming the actor “box office poison”, the producer wanted them to steer clear of Welles and rather go with the English actor Noël Coward. “Okay. I remember going to a place on 14th Street called Movie Star News where they had 8 by 10 glossies, production stills, and I bought a beautiful set of The Third Man, including some great artwork, and a great shot of Anton Karas under a table in the recording studio. So I said, “Look, we’re going on location five weeks. I then brought a recording of that back to the studio to see if the music fought against the dialogue—as some did—but a good deal of it worked well. I was having dinner one night with Orson. That’s when she says, “The cat only liked Harry.” So that leads right into the great revelation of Harry Lime in the doorway with the cat—which is indispensable. The images never feel grounded. That Third Man theme was a part of our lives. humza khan says: October 17, 2009 at 8:18 pm. Frederick Baker reveals the drama behind the scenes. P. 67). It is a Vienna far removed from the rollicking erotics of Ernst Lubitsch or the wistful elegance and melancholy beauty of Max Ophüls. My throat! The actors we used at night didn’t work in the day and vice versa. Available from: http://www.rouge.com.au/rougerouge/third_man.html. Apart from the pleasantness of the music, there is the precise matching of musical phrases or chords and dialogue or action throughout the film. Although the myth prevailed, it has been debunked time and time again. But even with commercial breaks on a 16-inch screen, the power of the picture, the surprise, the entertainment, the filmmaking itself… a revelation. Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Carol Reed’s The Third Man. The devil is often shown accompanied by or in the shape of a cat. I’ll be back at the hotel. She introduced him to individuals that would ultimately aid him in doing his research—journalist Peter Smollett brought the city’s sewers to the novelist’s attention and British military officials told him about the black market and the tensions between the Allied forces. “Carol,” he said, “next time you make a picture, just put it on top of the camera, will you!”. What happens in this shot has, I think, already been mentioned. We sense his presence before we ever get to lay eyes on him, because the characters, primarily Holly Martins, keep resurrecting him at every turn. This track was recorded exclusively for the Criterion Collection in 2007. It should be noted that The Third Man has had a great influence on the thriller genre following its release. When Holly Martins finally meets Harry face to face on the Ferris wheel, you expect Harry Lime the criminal. So why do we keep watching? Let me search your instinct here. That way we got double the work done in the same time. It was Graham Greene’s script, and he only has that one big scene in the film where he talks on the wheel. Filmmaker Carol Reed, hailed as one of the greatest U.K. directors, became famous in the late 1930s and 1940s with motion pictures such as Night Train to Munich (1940), Odd Man Out (1947) and The Fallen Idol (1948), a movie which marked his first collaboration with writer and former spy Graham Greene, who co-wrote the screenplay based on his own short story The Basement Room (1936). Whilst Cotten had been trying to get the cat to play, I had him say, “Bad-tempered cat.” Then I worked in the line for Valli: “He only liked Harry.” We next look out the window, see a man come down the street, and watch him enter a doorway. If you find Cinephilia & Beyond useful and inspiring, please consider making a small donation. He cuts too little. The Truman Show architecture set Article. The figure of Lime appears by different way of lighting, a stronger source of light to make the audience understand clearly that it was him. Most contemporary film noir movies have been dubbed neo-noir science fiction films or tech-noir. —Carol Reed. The shot immediately preceding that was done with Orson in the studio, because in Vienna there isn’t any staircase leading directly up to a drain… and the censors objected to Cotten shooting Harry Lime (since it was a mercy killing). Specifically, in the scene in which Harry runs to escape from the tunnel. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. You must always do as you like, gambling on the possibility that what you like is also commercial. He improvised that scene! These elements convert the space to be dark, confusing and labyrinthine in nature. Korda’s representative Elizabeth Montagu showed the author around Vienna, taking him to both the ruins and the parts of the city that were still standing. By this framing of the different shots, the lines cleverly draw the attention of the audience. What’s driven other zither players mad (they can never figure out how it’s done) is that he played the tune, then, with an earphone rerecorded it, adding thirds. The wide-angle lenses heighten depth perception through their compression of horizontal and vertical spaces. The Third Man, released on September 2, 1949, is regarded by many as one of the greatest cinema classics of all time. Australian Robert Krasker, who had previously worked with Reed on Odd Man Out, rightfully took home the golden statuette. They heard him playing his zither in a nightclub in Vienna, and when they went into the studio in London it didn’t sound the same. Welles comes into the picture about halfway through. Reed was possibly influenced by Robert Siodmak’s 1946 film, The Spiral Staircase, which was directed three years before The Third Man. I go into the cutting room at one every day to see the previous day’s rushes. Available from: http://www.hollywoodlexicon.com/dutchangle.html [Accessed 14 March 2017], – Misek R. (2007) Wrong Geometries in The Third Man. The plot of the film surrounds a suspicious accident. Then all of a sudden I hear a voice shouting. Graham Greene’s Catholicism had a strong impact on me, his themes of sin and redemption. But from all the possible devices for disorienting the spectator, why did you choose this one? But nobody knew what was going to come out of his mouth. In a similar fashion, Reed shows an overview of the Northern Irish city that in which another of his movies, Odd Man Out in 1947, is set. The DVD/Blu-ray of the film (beautifully restored in 4K for the first time) is available at Amazon and other online retailers. We worked from eight p.m. to five a.m. then went to bed, got up at ten a.m. worked with the day unit until four, and then went back to bed until eight. Peter Bogdanovich’s introduction to The Third Man. When they do that to me, it has the reverse effect. I intend it to make the audience uncomfortable. The director uses all the different parts of the Vienna’s sewers, creating complete confusion within the audience because they cannot quite link the tunnels, openings and stairs together, resulting in disorientation. “How was that?” he asks. The crew sprayed water on the cobbled streets to make them reflect light at night (Baker, 2004). ( Log Out / Finally, the most common thematic plot points are the detective, the femme fatal, and an investigation into a crime; a crime that tends to be a murder. “Jeez,” he said, “this is the way to make pictures!” He walked across the Prater, said two lines to Cotten, and then I said. If you’ve got five weeks on location, you know you’ve got to get all your shots in that period. Film Noir may be characterized by the use of black and white, the use of low key lighting, close-ups, abstract angles and deep-focus of shooting. Usually, I talk to my composer, saying, “You know, we should have something amusing there, something romantic here.” Then after three or four weeks, he comes to me, plays the piano and says, “Here’s what the drums are going to do,” and then. best! Is that what suggested this moment to you? Oh, God, so many cats! The dark and the light are so sharp, acting to confuse the audience and blurring the boundaries between lights and actual architectural structures, creating a new architectural composition in the pre-existing city. Although initially intended to be only a movie treatment, Greene’s story The Third Man was later published in the form of a novella. He refers to that moment in such a beautiful, special way. About four months ago, I screened a beautiful 35mm print of the picture for my daughter and her friends. Sardines! Basingstoke: Macmillan. And as Shin characteristically says “Thus, the verbal coincidence of the names “Josef” and “Joseph” becomes striking; there is an eerie echoing of names and unseen bodies”. Before we delve into the ins and outs of Robert Krasker’s milestone of noir cinematography, I’d like to take a minute to praise star Joseph Cotton, a man who shines in every single movie I’ve seen him in, from the underrated Gaslight to such iconic films as Citizen Kane. The Third Man is a film where everything works: script, direction, the performances of Welles, Cotten, Trevor Howard (the cynical police major) and Alida Valli (the enigmatic traveler), Robert Krasker's flamboyantly tilted black-and-white cinematography and the unforgettably spare and haunting zither score by Anton Karas. If some dismiss a work because it “fits” into a genre, then why does it sustain repeated viewings? Don’t cut the cameras! “Cotten and Valli you can have,” he said, “but you can’t have Orson.” I asked why, knowing very well that Orson wasn’t under contract to him and that he preferred me to use someone who was. When we were on location, I used to store props in a studio outside the city. That sound was so strong, raw, yet jaunty. Pearson Education Ltd. Essex: 2002, – Unknown. How did you do that? There is a moment wherein it is revealed to the audience that the name of the actual dead person is “Josef”. He came straight off the train in Vienna one morning, and we did his first shot by nine o’clock. You’ve said that much of the excellence of The Third Man is due to location shooting. Welles’ Harry looms like a menacing shadow over the main characters, inhabiting their every thought, the mere notion of him and his existence, i.e. Graham Greene originally gave it a happier ending, while Carol Reed was forced to change the film … The professor had different ideas. According to her, Greene fell deeply in love with the Austrian capital. But it’s more than that—it’s one of the great epiphanies in movies: the cat turning the corner and nestling itself on those wing-tip shoes, and then Harry Lime being revealed when the light is turned on in the doorway and it shines in his face. By this time David Selznick wanted me to do Tess of the D’ Urbervilles, which I wasn’t very keen on. The cuckoo clock line, he can have that one. [Online]. The shot in question is the very last one, depicting the ending that was once meant to be a happy one. It’s a bit of a rush, but it’s better to rush than not get it all and have to match things in the studio. I suffered a lot of opposition going to Vienna with ‘The Third Man.’ In those days, one didn’t take actors on location. “Okay. Wonderful! After the bullies leave, Chiron wanders around and finds a syringe, foreshadowing his profession in the third part of the film. Common tropes that appear in both Film Noir and Expressionism are the repetitive crime drama, and romances with the sense of scepticism and paranoia. The sounds of falling water, the transitions between English and German languages; most of the audience are unable to understand everything they hear, creating an enigmatic hypothesis of the exact conversation. I cannot work under such conditions. Directing is conveying to actors what you had in mind while working with the author. No. Whilst the boys were unloading, I’d go to a store to get carafes of wine for them. Available from: https://modernismmodernity.org/articles/statues-still-stood-third-man-and-third-spaces, – Spicer, Andrew. The Third Man is a 1949 British film noir directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene, and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard. Then all of a sudden I hear a voice shouting. Welles comes into the picture about halfway through. This movie ranks 25th in Carter B. Horsley's Top 500 Sound Films , 57th in the American Film Institute's Top 100 , 56th in Time Out's Top 100, 33rd in the I nternational Movie Data Base Voter's Top 250 , … "The Third Man" reflects the optimism of Americans and the bone-weariness of Europe after the war. And then the great line—“Tax-free, old man, tax-free.” And not to mention, Harry’s response to, “You used to believe in God”— “Oh, I still do believe in God, old man. It’s not just a dramatic revelation—there’s something about Orson Welles’ smile at that point that shifts everything to another level, and it sustains no matter how many times you see it. [Online]. ( Log Out / After two months, Greene left Vienna to go to Italy, not to do research on Rome, as Korda might have expected, but to write down the story that presented itself to him as a result of both his time spent in Vienna and his desire to follow the character of Harry and bear witness to his fate. In the dream-analysis a staircase symbolizes a transition, from one space to another; there is a destination, and a journey that is mostly hopeful. Even contemporary films, like Robert Wise’s The Haunting 1963 and Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island 2010, by using the wide symbol, enhanced a scene’s meaning and set significant cinematic moments on or around staircases. Excerpt from the interview with Carol Reed in the book Encountering Directors by Charles Thomas Samuels (1972). After that, the editor must understand not only what you did on the floor, but what the author had in mind—a man the editor’s never even met. But a director must work with his editor. I edit as I go along—during the lunch break. Lime cannot escape. [Online]. With this cinematographic choice, the use of mise en scène and lighting creates multiple vanishing points. As Dr Misek mentions, in some scenes the lights select lines that are already there, for instance, the beveling on the side of a building or the receding rails of a tramline. How? There’s some truth in an old saying: ‘Movies aren’t written—they’re re-written, and re-written and rewritten.’ Graham Greene, when discussing his screenplay entitled The Third Man that he wrote for producer Alexander Korda and director Carol Reed, has said something very near to this. Other than the way of shooting, sound is utilized to create a claustrophobic feeling too. It’s all a perfect fit. The Third Man is director Carol Reed’s 1949 noir starring (among others) Joseph Cotten, and is adapted from Graham Greene’s novella of the same name. But the cat just turns and jumps off. [Online]. —Carol Reed. The Third Man Awards and Nominations. The original script pages for the classic ferris wheel scene—without the ‘cuckoo clock’ improvisation, courtesy of British Film Institute, BFI National Archive. At the beginning of 1948, head of British-Lion and London Film Productions Sir Alexander Korda, who had introduced the director and the novelist prior to their first collaboration, tasked Greene with doing research on and writing “an original postwar continental story to be based on either or both the following territories: Vienna, Rome.” That Reed would direct the future feature film was already set in stone, so Greene traveled to post-WWII Vienna, which was divided into four Allied zones. (2014) German Expressionism Influence on Horror & Film-Noir. Αs mentioned above, the film starts with an overview of Vienna, The director combines the soundtrack with deplorable locations as the scene progresses. The upbeat irony of it…. It is hard to understand fully the dimensions of the sewer and whether or not there is any escape. For instance, on top of a suspension bridge or at the centre of a Ferris wheel. You can’t talk about The Third Man without recognizing the incredible contribution of [cinematographer] Robert Krasker. But a producer can be very valuable. Moreover, close examination of his original—of the published screenplay and of footnotes to it that indicate subsequent alterations and the changes between the text and the film itself—provides one of the very best accounts that is available of the complex and sometimes mysterious process of the evolutionary stages of the work done by a writer and director. We know what happens in Psycho or Vertigo or The Red Shoes. The stable camera showing the sculptures intensifies the audience’s observance of the scene in an effort to discern what is a statue and what is actually a soldier. 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