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The Third Man

Turkish title: Üçüncü Adam Kim?

“Hunted by men ... Sought by WOMEN!”

1949 · 1 h 44 min
Directed by Carol Reed
DramaFilm-NoirMystery

Cast

Joseph Cotten Orson Welles Alida Valli Trevor Howard

Credits

Written by: Graham Greene

Plot

The American pulp writer Holly Martins arrives in the shattered, four-power-occupied Vienna of 1949 to meet his friend Harry Lime, only to learn that Harry has died in a street accident. Not believing the official account, he investigates and finds a conspiracy involving black-market penicillin. Carol Reed's film, with a script by Graham Greene, is famous for its tilted camera, its shadows, the zither music of Anton Karas and its sewers, and for Orson Welles's brief appearance as Harry Lime. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

Sinekatalog’s take

Postwar Vienna, a zither score and a famous cuckoo-clock speech. Carol Reed's noir mixes tilted angles and shadows with a story of friendship and betrayal, and Orson Welles steals it with limited screen time.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.

Ratings

IMDb: 8.1 / 10 (197,807 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 99% (97 critic reviews)
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset; Rotten Tomatoes snapshot from October 2026. Scores change over time.

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