A Filmmaker's Review: "The Third Man" (1949)

One of my all-time favourite detective noir films, "The Third Man" (1949) is just the film I wanted to re-watch on NYE. I have watched it many times over the years and I have adored it each and every time because the twist still turns out as a surprise and if you're really watching - you can see all the little hints and clues throughout the film. For example, the one about the cat.

Based on Graham Greene's novel of the same name, this film is a psychodrama of harsh angles, strange music and a very dark, tense vibe. It's basically the perfect British film and you have to admit, films like Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes and Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds borrow so much from this film it is actually unreal. There are a lot of films that have taken even the smallest detail from this film to use in their own and you can definitely see it when you take a closer look (I mean, Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes is damn near copyright infringement, just hear that music...). It only goes to show that this film has endured so long and, will probably go for a long while more - that's until we get bored of detective films. I don't think we'll ever get bored of them actually.

There's something incredibly striking about this film and whether it is those harsh camera angles from various, strange corners - thrusted up or down upon the scene, or whether it is that weird music in the background. Whether it is the incredible acting or the most clever directing, whether it is the landscape and scenery, the noir feeling or even the dialogue. This film is one of the most suspenseful in all of British Cinema History and even if you've seen it 100 times, it'll surprise you 101.

When it comes to it, the film holds some of its great suspense for account in its dialogue, which you notice straight away in the way in which people talk about the dead guy. The elusiveness of people during the death of this person is extreme and when you realise that everyone involved and everyone who was present at the time was not a stranger, well things do just become stranger and stranger indeed. It is such a poignant part of the film, in which you realise that nobody around the death, none of the witnesses etc. were unknown by the dead guy. It really begins to unravel the plot as to how this guy died.

When it comes to the characters, most of them apart from the police are acting strangely and so, you begin to wonder about people's motives and how they act in comparison to what you think they know. When they exhume the coffin for further analysis, things become more and more strange and again - the plot unravels once more.

I don't think that this film would've been quite what it was without the incredible acting talent of Orson Welles. There's something amazing about his acting talent that, if you've watched films like "Citizen Kane" (1941), you would totally understand. In "The Third Man" (1949), Welles plays one of the key characters in the plot and though I won't reveal it and spoil the story for you here - it is an amazing piece of acting that relies mostly on what is said by various other characters - each of whom are hiding something.

I cannot tell you how much I love re-watching this film. There's something about it that draws you in and makes you watch it over and over. It has a very similar vibe that the book by Graham Greene has. It is such a brilliant film to watch, study, re-watch and write about that I couldn't possibly write down all the things I loved about it here. It would be far too long. But the dialogue mixed with the cinematography, the music, the acting and the incredible atmosphere has made for one of the greatest British films ever made. On various lists, "The Third Man" (1949) has been called either the greatest British film or the second greatest British film of all time and for very good reason - it is just such an incredible classic that spun and started an amazing genre that, without this film, wouldn't have come to much light at all. It is a near-perfect movie.