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

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

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

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.

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)