Saturday 13 October 2007

The Third Man Theme














"The Third Man Theme" by Anton Karas is the soundtrack of the movie. The Vienesse zither (on your left) player , was discovered by the director Carol Reed just by chance. The latest was in a wine tavern making the final arrengaments for the movie, when he heard the sound of the zither, which he had never listened to before. He immidiatly decided that the music he wanted in his movie was that, so he persuaded Karas to participate in his movie.

After this casual meeting, Karas never imagined that his life as about to change due to the success of the movie and song. He played all over the world this successful theme, even for the British Royal Family and the Pope.


Despite of the success that this song had, we would like to mention that we did not like the music at all. This could be because we are out of time , I mean,the music we listen to is absolutely different and that we are not used to hear this kind of music. Nevertheless, as almost everyone, we think that the musci must be related with the film, phenomena which we think does not happen in this movie. We believe that the music gives everything except the suspense that is required in the film, since it's clasification, Film Noir.


If you feel curiosity about this song, you can listen to it in here :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFz79SBnuk8
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Historical Context



In order to understand the movie in a better way, it is important to mention which was the historical context in which the movie was made.

The Third Man was made in Austria, particularly in the capital of the country, Vienna. This city is located at the very east of the country and it is the most important city in terms of economy, culture and politics.
As Vienna had its first inhabitants in the 500 BC, it has a long history, but as we would like to highlight the history in which the movie was made, we are going to talk about between the years 1938 and 1955.
Before the Second World War, Adolf Hitler, the well-known leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, wanted to take over Austria, following his desires to unify this territory with Germany in order to create a strongest nation, which he did the 13th March, 1938, when the city suffered the “Anschluss” and the country started to form part of the “Reich German”, which lasted until the end of the war, when the German lost their power over the city in hands of the Allies. The latest were composed by the French, the Americans , the English and the Soviets, who occupied the country divided in four equal parts for ten years, until 1955 when Vienna again became free from external power.
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About Carol Reed


After introducing you to our movie, The Third Man, we would like you to know a little bit about the director: Carol Reed.
We wanted to dig a little deep into Carol Reed's filmography and life.

In this 1st part, we are going to tell a little bit about his life.

Carol Reed was born in Putney, London in December the 30th, 1906.
Although this name could look like a female's name, this is a man, a Sir, to be more exactly, and his job was screenwriterm producer and movie director.
Carol was the ilegitimate son of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, a great actor, business man and founder of the Royal School of Dramatic Arts, and his maid May Pinned Reed.
His life was very comfortable, and he was well-educated at King's School of Canterbury.

Reed wanted to be an actor, just like his father, but in 1922 her mother sent him to Massachussets to work with his uncle in a chicken farm, which didn't last much, because after 6 months he returned to London, and her mother finally understood what he wanted, and so that he joined to Dame Sybil Thorndike Company, and he finally had his debut on 1924.

In 1927, Carol Reed started to be part of the group made by Edgar Wallace, a well-known intrigue writer. Reed turned into Wallace's personal assistant when this last one accepted to be the director of the British Lion Film Corporation. This way, Carol Reed learned every little detail about the Cinema World. Reed even acted in "The Flying squad" of Arthur Maude in 1929. After Edgar Wallace's death, Carol Reed enroled as a screenplay director in Ealing Studios.
Carol Reed first movie was "It Happened in Paris" in 1935, which he codirected it with Robert Wyler, and the first movie that he made by himself was "Midshipman Easy" in the next year.

Reed continued making movies.

Carol Reed died in April 25th, 1976 in Chelsea, London.

Well, this time we wanted you to know that Carol Reed's movies are more than just "The Third Man".Not all of them are well known or critised as good movies, but here they are:It Happened in Paris, codirected with Robert Wyler. (1935)Midshipman Easy. (1935)Laburnum Grove. (1936)Who's Your Lady Friend?. (1937)Talk of the Devil. (1937)Penny Paradise. (1938)Bank Holiday. (1938)Climbing High. (1939)The Stars Look Down. (1939)A Girl Must Live. (1939)Night Train to Munich. (1940)A Letter from Home. (1941)Kipps. (1941)Girl in the News. (1941)The Young Mr. Pitt. (1942) The Way Ahead. (1944) The True Glory. (1945)Odd Man Out. (1947)The Fallen Idol. (1948)The third man. (1949)Men of the Sea. (1951)Outcast of the Islands. (1952)The Man Between. (1953)A Kid for Two Farthings. (1955)Trapeze. (1956)The Key. (1958)Our Man in Havana. (1959)The running man. (1963)The Agony and the Ecstasy. (1965)Oliver!. (1968)Flap. (1970)Follow Me. (1972)
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Film Terminology

As we studied today in class we would like to talk about Language Film according to our movie.

Mise – en – scene:

1.- Setting, set and props: everything in front of the camera, decoration, objects but without people, only material things.
2.- Acting: People even animals.
3.- Costumes: Clothes, everything that the actors wear.
4.- Lighting: Key light, important light in the scene.
5.- Make Up: Decoration on the face and also hair style.
6.- *Print: any word that you can see.
[* Diagetic: The audience and the character can see /
Non-Diagetic: Only words that audience can see]


In our movie the Third Man the setting is in Vienna in the late 1940’s after the Second World War, regarding decoration we can see at the very beginning that the city was destroyed because of the war. The shots made in close space for example in Anna’s room everything was set up and well organized.
The acting is all the people who appear on the movie from Mr. Martins, Mr. Lime, Ms. Anna Smith...etc.
Lighting in our opinion was excellent because the movie was made in black and white so we think than the director tried to illuminate as much as possible so in some parts of the movie you can really appreciate the differences between day and night and some times we forgot that the move was in black and white.
Regarding make up on the actors is soft even in Anna who is the main female character and the hair style was according the time where the film was made.
The last point, print; in diagetic we only see the name of the countries which were in charge in Vienna in that time at the very beginning and also the name of the club where the characters met; and in non – diagetic print, we have the presentation of the people who made the movie at the beginning and also the credits at the end.

Sound:

1.- Music: all kind of music in the movie.
2.- Dialogue: Only actor’s words.
3.-Noise
4.- Use of silence
5.- Narrator: we have two types of narrator :
Voice Over: A character who tells us the story, we can see his or her face on the screen and Off Voice: We don’t see his or her face.


In our opinion music was the weakest point in the movie because sometimes it was a little bit monotonous, specially the central theme of the movie which makes us think about "Spongebob SquarePants" because of the instrument used ,the Vienesse zither , so we think that the use of that music was sometime too moving when it was not necessary.
Dialogue is every word that we could heard in the movie, regarding the use of noise through the movie, the director use the silence in the climax of the movie when police tried to catch Mr. Lime in the sewer.
The type of narrator that we can identify in this movie are the two kinds: we have both at the beginning.:Voice over when a male voice introduce us in the historical context in Vienna and Off voice when Mr. Martins told us about what he was thinking or seeing.


Editing:

1.- Cut (What the director says to end the filming of a shot)
- Fade (in/out) : A transition from a shot to black where the image gradually becomes darker is a Fade Out; or from black where the image gradually becomes brighter is a Fade In. Fades are done at the lab in the printing phase, but prepared by the negative cutter, who cuts in an overlap of black into the A&B rolls

- Cross fade: Combination between fade in /out and dissolve

- Dissolve: a transition between two shots, where one shot fades away and simultaneously another shot fades in.

- Jump cut: Basically, two similar shots cut together with a jump in continuity, camera position or time. Usually French directors use this technique the cut doesn’t have any sense.

-Cut: Simply kind of cut. (copy and paste).


2.- Time
- Raccord: Continuity (Shoulder/ Over shoulder) - The seamlessness of detail from one shot to another within a scene. Continuity refers particularly to the physical elements, rather than to the choices in coverage ( coverage is used to describe the architecture of breaking down a script into the shots that will allow the scene to be cut together. Although coverage addresses the bare-bones question of getting shots that will cut together smoothly, it is important not to be too distracted from bigger aesthetic question of getting the right shots for the scene to work) that can result in a lack of seamlessness. Elements of continuity include any actions of the actor, the placement of props, the lighting, the costumes, and so on.

- Forward : Go ahead
- Ellipsis: It doesn’t go step by step
- Flash forward: A segment of film that breaks normal chronological order by shifting directly to a future time. Flash forward, like flashback, may be subjective (showing precognition or fears of what might happen) or objective (suggesting what will eventually happen and thus setting up relationships for an audience to perceive).
- Rewind: a) Flashback segment of film that breaks normal chronological order by shifting directly to time past. Flashback may be subjective (showing the thoughts and memory of a character) or objective (returning to earlier events to show their relationship to the present) b)Racconto a long passage to the past
-Virtual: a) Ralentti = slow motion b) Fast camera all character move fast c) Freeze none moves

Regarding editing it is quite difficult to analyze step by step but in general the cuttings in our movie are extremely simple, just simple cut. About time features we have raccord shoulder and over shoulder.

Cinematography:

1.- Camera angle: High/Low/Straight /Areal (panoramic)
2.- Camera distance:
- Extremely long shot, from one point to another.
-Long shot, general view
-Medium shot, from the half body up
- Close up shot, from the neck up
- Extremely close up shot, just one part in isolation
- Deep Focus (While a lens focuses on a single plane of depth, there is usually an additional area in focus behind and in front of that plane. This is depth of field. Depth of field increases as the iris is closed. There is more depth of field the wider the lens and less the longer the lens. There is a deeper area in focus the further away a lens is focused than there is when a lens is focused close.)/ Shallow Focus (one object or character clear and the rest not).
-Zoom

3.- Camera Movement:
- Tracking, when the camera follows the character
- Panning, when the camera moves from one side to another side.

4. - Framing
- In (sounds in the scene) / out ( sounds out of the scene)
- Split screen, division of the screen

In our movie regarding cinematography we identified almost everything, camera angle, camera distance, camera movement and also framing. After watching the move when we started to analyze it we were very surprised because the shot where extremely simple but that wasn’t an obstacle to do the film interesting. The close ups, the deep focus, shallow among other makes the film faster and also that makes us to appreciate the film in a technical way.
Even though the film was made in 1949, when the film industry regarding special effects and shots was in its infancy that wasn’t a barrier to success.
This successfulness in our opinion is due to the story by itself because was very original for the time, the director and also the actors.

What do you think.... Does our blog need something more technical regarding the movie?, we really appreciate your opinion.

Check this site of us with more pictures of the film

Wolcome to The Thrid Man site