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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 April 2000 Issue No. 478 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 April 2000 Issue No. 478
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Heritage Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Plain Talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
I remember the first time I saw Carol Reed's The Third Man. I say the first time because, like many other films, I have since seen it many, many times. That first time was in London, back in 1950 or 1951. I remember the long queues of people waiting patiently outside the cinema. At the time it had been declared film of the century by the British Film Institute.
I was reminded of this when I received a notice from the Austrian Embassy entitled "Vienna and the Third Man". For those who have not seen the film, its action takes place in Vienna -- not the Vienna we know today, a most beautiful city with some of the greatest musical echoes of Europe in its atmosphere, but the Vienna of 1947, an older, sadder Vienna, a city that had just been bombed and was overcast with the shadows of poverty and black-marketeering.
For The Third Man, Graham Greene wrote the script. The main actors were Joseph Cotton, playing Holly Martin, an American journalist who comes to Vienna to meet an old friend of his, Harry Lime (Orson Welles). The journalist is told that his friend Harry was killed in a traffic accident, but the chief of the British military police (played by Trevor Howard) also explains that Harry had been a black-marketeer in Vienna.
Suspicious of such contradictory reports, Martins decides to investigate the mysterious incident and restore his friend's good name, only to discover that his friend was actually leading a buoyant black-marketeering career, selling diluted penicillin (a substance that painfully killed children in hospitals) and using the extensive underground sewer system to move around Vienna and across the occupation zone boundaries.
Major Calloway eventually discovers that the corpse in Lime's coffin was another man's, and after a thrilling chase in the sewers Harry Lime is shot by his friend Martins. The film ends where it began, at Harry's funeral in Vienna Central Cemetery. It is remembered not only because of Graham Greene's script or the bevy of famous actors, but also for the Harry Lime musical theme which has become known all over the world. The story of The Third Man does not end here. On 9 March, a Third Man Gala was organised in Vienna to commemorate the first screening of the film, fifty years ago. Every year thousands of people from all over the world join guided tours in Vienna to see the places where The Third Man was shot. The tour, according to the embassy notice, lasts about two hours and a half, the meeting place being the U4 underground station and Vienna's historic sewers. On Mondays and Fridays, the tours are undertaken once every half an hour.
In spite of the plethora of stars, the one person who attracted the most attention was Anton Karas, who played the zither in Vienna's taverns. On hearing Karas, Reed decided that he would provide the film's entire music. The producer wanted a full orchestra, but Reed insisted on Karas alone. And the Harry Lime theme has since become one of the most popular worldwide. Hyper nervous, schmaltzy and dangerous, it has become part of the legend of the film. Anton Karas later toured the world, playing his zither for kings, statesmen and even Pope Pius XII.
Karas later retired to a wine-growing region near Vienna where he opened a wine restaurant. One of the guest rooms was reserved for Carol Reed and his wife. The last time Karas played the Harry Lime theme was at Carol Reed's funeral in 1976. He himself died in Vienna in 1985. The Harry Lime theme has sold 40 million copies to date, and is still in demand.
