By RAY KELLY
Carol Reed’s post-war classic The Third Man will mark the 75th anniversary of its world premiere with a special showing in Vienna on Sunday night, September 1.
A 35mm print will be screened at Vienna’s Burg Kino, one of the oldest operating movie houses in the world. The Third Man Museum, headed by Gerhard Strassgschwandtner and Karin Höfler, will be part of the diamond jubilee. A short film on the nearly 20-year old museum will be shown with the movie and there will be a presentation of the museum’s new catalogue, according to Strassgschwandtner.
The movie, which starred Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, has never been popular in Austria, he said. It ran only a few weeks upon it its initial release, though it was a huge success in Great Britain.
“The Third Man is totally unpopular in Vienna and Austria,” Strassgschwandtner said. “Only 3 percent of our visitors are locals; 70 percent of our visitors are from three countries: the USA, Great Britain and Germany.”
The museum has a website at 3mpc.net. It can be reached by telephone at +43-1-5864872 or email at contact@3mpc.net
Written by Graham Greene, The Third Man stars Cotten as Holly Martins, an American writer of Westerns, who arrives in post-war Vienna to visit his old friend Harry Lime (Welles). On arrival, he learns that his friend has been killed in a street accident. Further, military police chief Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) informs him that Lime was a black marketer wanted by the police. Alida Valli and Bernard Lee co-star.
The film had its world premiere at the Ritz Cinema in Hastings, England, on September 1, 1949. It had its U.S. premiere five months later on February 2, 1950.
The Third Man was honored with an Academy Award, British Film Academy Award and the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
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