Orson Welles doesn’t make his stunning first appearance as the amoral Harry Lime until halfway through THE THIRD MAN, and he racks up only 10 or 15 minutes total screen time after that. But his dark presence permeates every frame, both as a character and, one suspects, as Director Carol Reed's visual consultant. His influence shows up in the script, too, such as in his famous ferris wheel speech about the Borgias and cuckoo clocks. Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton, who also narrates the American version, while Reed narrates the British one), is an American pulp fiction writer offered a job by his old friend Lime. But upon arriving in Vienna, Martins is shocked to learn that Lime was a black market racketeer trafficking phony penicillin and has recently been hit and killed by an automobile. At first, Martins refuses to believe his friend was a criminal, but as he's drawn deeper and deeper into a Lime pit of intrigue and deception, he learns the truth, including the surprising identity of the third man who reportedly carried the dead Lime away. A spell-binding film, considered by many to be Reed's and British cinema's finest. (Trivia notes: Near the end of the film, when Lime is being pursued through the sewers, there's a scene above ground which shows his fingers protruding through a sewer grate. In reality, the digits were Director Reed's. A few years later, Lime's evil nature was dramatically softened by Welles for radio, later TV.)
THE THIRD MAN (1949)
Lime pit
Orson Welles doesn’t make his stunning first appearance as the amoral Harry Lime until halfway through THE THIRD MAN, and he racks up only 10 or 15 minutes total screen time after that. But his dark presence permeates every frame, both as a character and, one suspects, as Director Carol Reed's visual consultant. His influence shows up in the script, too, such as in his famous ferris wheel speech about the Borgias and cuckoo clocks. Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton, who also narrates the American version, while Reed narrates the British one), is an American pulp fiction writer offered a job by his old friend Lime. But upon arriving in Vienna, Martins is shocked to learn that Lime was a black market racketeer trafficking phony penicillin and has recently been hit and killed by an automobile. At first, Martins refuses to believe his friend was a criminal, but as he's drawn deeper and deeper into a Lime pit of intrigue and deception, he learns the truth, including the surprising identity of the third man who reportedly carried the dead Lime away. A spell-binding film, considered by many to be Reed's and British cinema's finest. (Trivia notes: Near the end of the film, when Lime is being pursued through the sewers, there's a scene above ground which shows his fingers protruding through a sewer grate. In reality, the digits were Director Reed's. A few years later, Lime's evil nature was dramatically softened by Welles for radio, later TV.)
