The Third Man & The Maltese Falcon & Citizen kane

As we have mentioned previously in this blog, the genre to which our film belongs is FILM NOIR , even though it is not considered as a genre, we can say that the mood of this movie corresponds to the characteristics that film noir has. That is the reason why looking and visiting our classmate’s blogs, we have noticed a relationship in genre with two movies : The Maltese Falcon and Citizen Kane.
The Third Man and these two movies mentioned belong to the category of Film Noir since all of them work with the typical dark , shadowy colors used in this genre. They are also classified here because they work with topics related to death , and deeply, with ways of dying that are not that clear because the person who has died has been murder for someone who is not discovered until the end of the movies. Talking about this, we can also make a relation among these films, because all of them have as a second genre MYSTERY.
Other connection found between The Maltese Falcon and our movie, is that both of them were at the beginning a book, which became a film.
Regarding Citizen Kane, the most noticeable similarity is related with the participation of the great Orson Wells, who directed Citizen Kane and participated as the main actor in The Third Man, which allows us to say that this man was a great contributor in the history of cinema.
Finally, The Maltese Falcon , Citizen Kane and our movie were released in the 40s, the decade of the golden age of film noir, period between 1940s and 1960s.

If you are really into learning about movies like The Third Man , we invite you to visit these blogs:

Citizen Kane

http://citizenkanemovie.blogspot.com/

The Maltese Falcon

http://the-maltese-falcon.blogspot.com/

History and setting similarities between our movie and others.

One aspect where we can compare our movie others, is Setting and Historical Context.

The Third Man was set after the World War II, and this influenced the themes in the movie, the acting, the places where our movie was shot and of course, the idea that the Director, writer, editor, etc. had when they filmmade The Third Man movie.

The Thin Red Line is set during the World War II, and of course that this period is represented in this movie, from the war genre.

Cabaret, a very different movie than the other two, is set Before the War, when the Nazis took control of Germany. This period is called the Depression, the uncertainty those days made people felt heartless, selfish, etc.

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As you can all see in our classmates blogs, the plots of these three movies are very different, but it's not the story inside the movie which we can compare, but the background, because that influence as all, despite the period.

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For more information:

The Thin Red Line blog http://cinema-the-thin-red-line.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html

Cabaret Blog http://cabaret1972.blogspot.com/

Orson Welles: Actor and Director.

Orson Welles, actually his birth name was George Orson Welles, besides of being the protagonist of "The Third Man", acted in many movies and directed some others, but this was a consequence of his life.

He was born in May 6th, 1915 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, USA. His father, Richard Head Welles, was a bussinessman and an inventor, and his mother, Beatrice Ives, was a piano soloist. No wonder why he became an artist too. Welles' mother instructed him in different art areas, such as painting, literature, music and drawing with the help of Maurice Bernstain.

He was the youngest child of this couple, but his brother was in a mental institution, so Orson was kind of only son. At the age of 9, his mother died of Ictericia, and because of this, Orson was under the custory of his father, who turned into an alcoholic.

Thanks to Bernstain, Orson recovered his lost interest for music, and Barnstain also encourage Welles to continue studying and go to Tool School of Illinois.

Unfortunately and as a consequence of the drinking problem, Orson's father died when he was just 15 years old.

Just 1 year after his father's death, Welles started to work in a theater in Dublin, Ireland. Soon after, he went to New York and debuted on Brodway when he was only a 17 year-old-boy.

Orson Welles's acting career grew rapidly, with the foundation of the theater company Mercury Theater, then he represented on the radio an adaptation of The War of the Worlds.

Because of the inestabily in Europe, the Nazis, and all the historical context of 1939, he sensibilized and that also helped him in making movies regarding this situation.

His fame continued going up, and when he was 24 years old, and having learned more about technicalities of cinema, he made his biggest and most important movie: The Fourth Commandment (1942).

Orson Welles was a very commited participant of the world of cinema. He was a producer, director, screenplayer, writer, actor, editor, and his works travelled all around the world, making him on of the greatest cinema performers.

His works are so much that we would never end telling you everything that he has done, but in this opportunity, we mentioned him because of "The Third Man" movie, where he was the leading actor and writer.

Orson was married to Virginia Nicholson, but their marriage only last 6 years, from 1934 to 1940. After 3 years, Welles got married with Rita Hayworth, aother very well-known and excellent actress, but unfortunately this marriage lasted less than the previous one: just 5 years. He remained single until 1955, when he got together with Paola Mori, his last wife.

Welles died in October 10th, 1985 in Los Angeles, CA, USA. form a heart attack. In the next year, his ashes were buried in Antonio Ordoñez's hacienda, in Ronda, Malaga, as a last wish of Welles when he was still alive.

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[Information taken from: http://www.alohacriticon.com/elcriticon/article251.html , http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000080/ , http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Welles]

Don’t judge a book for its cover

The purpose of our blog started when our teacher of Film & Literature gave us the movie “The third man” to create a blog applying all the content that we have been studying during the whole semester. When we received the name of the film we felt a little bit disappointed because, first of all, the movie was in black and white, and also it was quite old (1949) so when we sat to watch it we already had a preconception of the film .However, watching the film we really enjoyed it, the movie made us change our mind and point of view about it because the mise- en –scene captivated us and also the stile of narratology and how the story is developed.
We realized that we can’t judge a movie just for its title or for the date when it was made. Now we have more tools to analyze a movie from a different perspective, for instance, before taking this course, we wouldn’t have seen a movie according to an analytical point of view.
To sum up we would like to say that we really enjoyed working on this blog because it has helped us to improve our knowledge about film terminology and, of course, about the proper use of English language. In addition, this is a new tool to learn since it is not the typical university activity, we mean by the usual going to classes and giving tests, but to use all we have learnt during the term in a practical way. This is to say that we confirm that is easier to learn by doing, not only learning by memory.

Awards

As we all know, there are many awards given for different academies in order to recognize excellence in some particular artistic area. In this case, of course, we will focus in cinema, letting you know the awards that have been given to “The Third Man”.

Here we have a list taken from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041959/awards of all the awards which the movie won and was nominated:


Cannes Film Festival

• Year : 1949
• Result : Winner
• Award : Grand Prize of the Festival
• Category/Recipient(s) : Carol Reed

BAFTA Awards

1)

• Year : 1950
• Result : Winner
• Award : BAFTA Film Award
• Category/Recipient(s) : Best British Film

2)

• Year : 1950
• Result : Nominated
• Award : BAFTA Film Award
• Category/Recipient(s) : Best Film from any Source
  

Directors Guild of America, USA

• Year : 1950
• Result : Nominated
• Award : DGA Award
• Category/Recipient(s) : Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures Carol Reed

Academy Awards, USA

• Year : 1951
• Result : Winner
• Award : Oscar
• Category/Recipient(s) : Best Cinematography, Black-and-White Robert Krasker
  

The same year, 1951,the movie was also nominated to Best Director (Carol Reed ) and Best Film Editing (Oswald Hafenrichter) .

The genre of our film

First of all, we would like to mention to which genre our film belongs. In film theory, genre refers to the primary method of film categorization. A Genre generally refers to films that share similarities in the narrative elements which they are constructed. Regarding Film Noir, French for "black film", has the characteristic of emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation but truly, film noir is not a genre, but rather the mood, style, point-of-view, or tone of a film.
Film noir is deeply influenced by the German expressionism movement that was developed between the 1910s and 1920s, closely related to the developments of the theater, photography, painting, sculpture, and architecture. A classical film of this time is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919.)
Film noir has a variety of themes, from gangster to social problems. Another important characteristic that this type of film has, is that most of the setting is associated with urban life, but specially with suburbia or rural areas or cities after the World War II.
In the case of “The third man”, we can clearly identify that Film Noir is the genre of the film, because the setting was in Vienna in post-war times and the main theme is related with death and traffic of penicillin, but we can also identify many other sub genres like Crime and mystery because through the movie nobody knows who has killed Harry. Another “sub genre” could be Romance because we could find a triangle between Mr. Martin, Mr. Lime, and Mrs. Smith.
In general we have to keep in our minds that all movies have a main genre but we can find many others.

(Some information was taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir and Ms Miriam Salazar's slides Oct [1].-22)

The Third Man Book by Graham Greene

In order to understand where the movie comes from, it is important to mention that “the Third Man” was first a book, before becoming a successful movie. However, Graham Greene never thought that this book would be famous all over the world. In fact, he wrote "The Third Man was never written to be read but only to be seen”[1]. These words were said for Graham Greene, the author of the book called “the Third Man” and the screen writer of the movie under the same name. This quote appears in the beginning of the book, the preface, where he clarified that he wrote the book differently in comparison with what writers use to do, which is to write not thinking “visually”. He wrote the book thinking it to be seen, not just to stay in pages.
Even though the book and the screen play are written by the same person, there are several differences between both of them. First of all, the name of the protagonist changes from Rollo Martins in the book to Holly Martins in the movie. Related to this character, his nationality is also changed since in the book he is British, but in the film he comes from the United States. Regarding the female protagonist, her name is not changed in the movie, however her nationality is, changing to be Hungarian in the book to Czech. In addition, in the movie does not appear an event related in the book, which is a kidnapping of Anna Schmidt by the Russians.
The internet allows us to find any information we may need, that is why we would like to highlight some websites that we think are very interesting if your are into learning more about this movie:

- Audio Book
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0140286829?sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

- Website dedicated to the English writer Graham Greene
http://members.tripod.com/~greeneland/index.htm

- To search inside the book page by page for free :
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0140286829/ref=sib_dp_pt/104-7204994-4878322#reader-link

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[1]http://bibliothek.bhak-bludenz.ac.at/greene.asp