Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Seventy-five years ago, in 1949, a film was released that was soon rated the finest British movie of all time. To many critics, it still is.It began with novelist and screenwriter Graham Greene visiting shattered and four-power-occupied postwar Vienna. The suggestion of the city as a location came from David O Selznick, American co-producer of the project (along with Alexander Korda, head of London Films). It may be that, in that age of hysterical US anti-communism, Selznick envisaged making a movie denouncing the Russians who, along with Britain, France and the US, controlled the four zones into which the city was divided.Greene, cynical and disillusioned, had no intention of helping to make anti-Soviet propaganda. But he was pleased to find that postwar Vienna was full of the kind of opportunist petty criminals who populated the world of his novels, leading to a plot that focused on the black market in fake penicillin. He also looked forward to working for a second time with the film’s director, Carol Reed. Reed, illegitimate son of actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, had been directing films since 1935 and was rated Britain’s finest director. Greene, writing as film critic for The Spectator, was an early admirer. Of Reed’s first credited film, Midshipman Easy, he wrote: “It is the first film of a new English director, Mr Carol Reed, who has more sense of the cinema than most veteran British directors.”Korda, who had a knack for teaming — it was he who linked up Michael Powell with Emeric Pressburger — brought the two men together as screenwriter and director. Their first film as partners, The Fallen Idol (1948), received enthusiastic reviews: it was nominated for two Oscars (one each for Greene and Reed) and won a Bafta and several other awards. Greene felt sure that Reed would go along with whatever he came up with by way of a script — which, with one or two small reservations, Reed did.An account by Greene (not wholly reliable; the writer had something of a mischievous, even malicious, streak) of his and Reed’s presentation of their script to Selznick makes entertaining reading. Unimpressed by the proposed title, the US co-producer commented: “‘Listen boys, who the hell is going to a film called The Third Man?’”Greene wrote: “‘Well,’ I said, ‘It’s a simple title. It’s easily remembered.’ Mr Selznick shook his head reproachfully. ‘You can do better than that, Graham . . . You are a writer. A good writer. I’m no writer, but you are. Now what we want — it’s not right, mind you . . . but then I’m no writer and you are, what we want is something like Night in Vienna, a title which will bring them in.’”“‘Graham and I will think about it,’ Reed interrupted with haste. It was a phrase I was to hear Reed frequently repeat, for the Korda contract had omitted to state that the director was under any obligation to accept Mr Selznick’s advice. Reed during the days that followed, like an admirable stonewaller, blocked every ball.”Unusually for the period, Reed insisted on shooting partially on location. So, soon after Greene’s initial visit, Reed and his crew checked into the Astoria Hotel in Kärtnerstrasse and began exploring venues. Some, Reed felt, weren’t quite what he wanted, so he didn’t scruple to add a building or two. For the crucial scene in Schreyvogelgasse he had a few statues and a distant gothic church constructed in the background.The Viennese, still suffering from the impact of the war, were eager to co-operate with Reed and his team. Nothing was too much trouble. A studio in the Vienna suburb of Sievering owned by Sascha Films, where Korda had worked before the war, was loaned out to them. So the shoot proceeded, but not without setbacks — not least from some of the members of the cast. Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, the naive writer of pulp Westerns who arrives in Vienna to meet his old school friend Harry Lime, was in a crotchety mood — he liked a drink, but had been warned by Reed to stay off the bottle. And he was accompanied by his wife; the marriage was under terminal strain. Trevor Howard, as the cool and sardonic Major Calloway, and Bernard Lee as his kindly sidekick Sergeant Paine, felt under no such restraints as regarded alcohol. They had to be awoken each morning from their hotel rooms with shouts of: “Come on, you’re late, you’re late!”More trouble — not for the first time — was the actor in the title role of Harry Lime, “The Third Man” himself: Orson Welles. Notoriously unreliable, Welles showed up whenever he felt like it, so in several scenes disguised actors had to stand in for him. And he refused to shoot his scenes in the Vienna sewer (where the Wien river runs, making it possibly the world’s cleanest and most odourless sewer), furious at being expected to work “in such filthy conditions”. So replicas of the sewers had to be constructed back at Shepperton in the UK.Even though he’s on screen for less than 15 of the film’s 104-minute running-time (a 93-minute version was edited for US audiences), Welles effortlessly dominates the action. It’s possibly the finest screen performance of his career. Hard to believe that Selznick’s alternative suggestion for the title role, Noël Coward, would have had a fraction of the same impact.Shooting partially at Shepperton gave rise to another casting problem — this time feline. For the scenes in which we see a cat leaving the apartment of Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli), crossing the street, and finally rubbing itself affectionately against Harry Lime’s shoes, three different animals had to be found. In terms of their markings they make a pretty good match. This is the point at which The Third Man meets The Third Cat.Finally there is the key contributor who became known as the Fourth Man: zither-player Anton Karas, who was playing when Reed and his team first had dinner at the Astoria. Reed was much taken with Karas’s playing and, to Korda’s surprise, the director proposed that instead of a conventional orchestral score, The Third Man be accompanied by Karas’s solo zither alone. The music scored a huge hit — and Karas, in demand around the world, was able to provide amply for his family.There are many fascinating stories to be told about the making of Reed and Greene’s cinematic masterpiece. If you’re curious, seek out Charles Drazin’s In Search of The Third Man (Methuen, 1999) — surely the best book about the film written. And you could visit Vienna, take the Third Man Tour, and stand on the same doorstep, at 8 Schreyvogelgasse, where Harry Lime stood.But best perhaps to end with Drazin’s verdict on this endlessly enigmatic movie: “Things are rarely as they seem.”‘The Third Man’ is in UK cinemas from September 6 and a 4K UHD anniversary collector’s edition will be available in the autumn
