The Third Man
Bookworm on May 10 2009 at 12:26 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
One of the beauties of satellite radio is that I get to hear music that’s a bit off the beaten track. That’s how I ended up hearing the theme music to The Third Man. Anton Karas’ incredible zither music that haunts the entire film. It’s amazing music, because it’s both cheerful and twisted. It’s the perfect backdrop to a film about an innocent American who comes to find his old friend in post-War Vienna (controlled simultaneously by the U.S., Britain and the Soviet Union) and discovers, instead, layers upon layers of corruption that he, as a naive American, finds almost impossible to understand. I couldn’t help but think of Americans cheering themselves on to elect the first black President, only to find Chicago in the White House.
If you haven’t seen the movie, you really should. I’m no fan of Graham Greene, who wrote the book upon which the film is based, but this is one of my favorite post-War films. And while I’m on the subject, another amazing post-War film is The Search, about an American soldier helping a refugee Czech boy. It’s shot on location in Berlin and is worth seeing.
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3 Responses to “The Third Man”
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It might be my favorite film. Too bad my students know so little of twentieth-century history that the entire plot would be incomprehensible to them.
It sounds like one of the background songs used in Sponge Bob Squarepants.
The lighting in the nighttime sequences is spectacular – some of the best ever!
And I always enjoy Trevor Howard.