Otto Penzler: 'The Third Man' Is The Greatest Crime Film Of All Time

Otto Penzler (seen in the below photo) is the president and CEO of MysteriousPress.com, the owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City and the editor of many anthologies of crime stories. 

As a noted authority on crime, espionage, suspense and mystery stories, Otto Penzler has been ranking, analyzes and celebrating the 106 Greatest Crime Films of All-Time for CrimeReads.com.

He has selected The Third Man as the greatest crime film of all-time.

I’d have a hard time picking just one film as the greatest all-time crime film, but The Third Man would most certainly be in my list of top ten crime films.

The 1949 film, directed by Carol Reed and written by the great thriller writer Graham Greene, is a classic film and one of my favorite crime films.

Harry Lime, portrayed By Orson Welles in The Third Man, is a great, evil character. Lime is a post-World War II black marketer who masterminds a plot to sell diluted penicillin to hospitals, which contributes to the death of many children.

Lime is unseen and only talked about for roughly half of the film and when he is finally introduced, we see only Lime’s face in the shadows, briefly lit in a dark alley in Vienna. Lime is seen quickly in profile, with a wry, smug and self-satisfied look on his face.

He is, as one reviewer called him, "a charming monster."

When Lime confronts his old friend, writer Holly Martins, played by Joseph Cotton, Lime excuses his actions in a now famous speech (written by Welles, not Greene).

In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance," Lime explained. "In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

The film, made richer by the black and white film noir style and the Anton Karas zither music, is truly unforgettable.

You can read Otto Penzler’s piece on The Third Man via the below link:

https://crimereads.com/the-greatest-crime-film-of-all-time-the-third-man/

You can also read my On Crime column on Otto Penzler in the Washington Times via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2020/01/otto-penzler-champion-of-crime-stories.html 

The Charm of Evil: Martin Scorsese On 'The Third Man': The Best Revelation In All Cinema

I'm a huge admirer of The Third Man, a great film directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene, and starring Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles and other fine actors.

You can read what Martin Scorsese thinks of the film thanks to a piece in the British newspaper the Independent.  

I saw The Third Man for the first time on television in New York, with commercial interruptions. I think I was about 15 years old, maybe 16. I saw Citizen Kane around the same period. I remember that I wanted to see the film on its first release, but was unable to do so, which created a mystique about the film. The theme was a radio hit, but my first viewing was on TV, around '56 or '57. But even with commercial breaks on a 16-inch screen, the power of the picture, the surprise, the entertainment, the film-making itself… a revelation. Expressive style, virtuosity – I became fixated, obsessed.

I couldn't wait to see the film again, but I had to wait until it was shown on television, maybe four or five months later. It wasn't the optimum viewing condition, I still lived in a small apartment with my family, so it was difficult to find the concentration and quiet I needed to figure out why the picture affected me so much. I was becoming aware of film-making itself around this time, about storytelling, about extraordinary cinematic experiences.

Simultaneously, a young priest who was a mentor to me and some friends gave us Graham Greene's books to read. The Power and the Glory had quite an effect on me. There was a stage version of it off-Broadway, and a live TV play with Laurence Olivier and George C Scott, also. Graham Greene's Catholicism had a strong impact on me, his themes of sin and redemption. I was very much aware of Graham Greene's contribution to The Third Man before seeing it. And I had seen his name on the credits of The Fallen Idol, in particular, the combination of Graham Greene and Carol Reed. I also admired Odd Man Out, as both of these films were shown on TV constantly.

... Has it had an influence on my career? When I saw it, I was ripe for it – ready to understand what you can do with the camera. The themes of the picture made me feel comfortable about dealing with similar kinds of characters, characters you'd consider undesirable - the charm of evil. I did a paper on the film when I was 18 at NYU. The professor had different ideas. He wrote a note on the paper: "Remember, it's only a thriller." I disagreed. We know what happens in Psycho or Vertigo or The Red Shoes. So why do we keep watching? If some dismiss a work because it "fits" into a genre, then why does it sustain repeated viewings? It's more than the plot twists and surprises of the story. Certainly, it's the characters, the world they inhabit, the love stories, the trust and betrayals – the human heart. Each presented with intelligence, wit, and a very real joy of film-making, while still feeling fresh.  

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/martin-scorsese-on-the-third-man-the-best-revelation-in-all-cinema-10340553.html

Note: I named The Third Man's Harry Lime character as one of the top three villains in my Crime Beat column. I named Martin Scorsese' Jimmy the Gent and Tommy from Goodfellas and Ian Fleming's Auric Goldfinger from Goldfinger as the other top film villains.

You can read the column via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/03/my-crime-beat-column-american-film.html 

5 Things You May Not Know About 'The Third Man'

Oliver Lyttelton at indiewire.com offers an interesting piece on one of my favorite films, The Third Man.

Thirty-six years ago today, on April 25th, 1976, filmmaker Carol Reed passed away. One of the greatest directors ever to come out of the U.K., Reed started out as an actor, but gained fame as a writer-director in the late 1930s and 1940s, thanks to films like "Night Train To Munich," and the outstanding "Odd Man Out" and "The Fallen Idol." Later, he'd also find success with films like "Trapeze," "Our Man In Havana," "The Agony and the Ecstasy" and "Oliver!," for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director, beating out Stanley Kubrick's "2001" and Gillo Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers."

But Reed's undisputed masterpiece is "The Third Man," a 1949 film noir based on a screenplay by the great British writer Graham Greene. The film involves a writer of Westerns, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), who comes to post-war Vienna after being promised a job by his childhood friend Harry Lime. On arriving, he discovers that Lime had seemingly been killed shortly beforehand. However, he soon finds out, through investigating with Lime's girlfriend Anna (Alida Valli) that his old pal had been stealing and diluting penicillin from military hospitals, leading to the death of children, and that Lime (indelibly played by Orson Welles) is still alive.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/5-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-third-man-20120425

You can watch some of the footage from the great film via the below link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBNlL23sUGI&feature=related

And you can listen to a reading of Graham Greene's The Third Man via the below link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykUcSk5JN6w

Note: the above photo is of Orson Welles as Harry Lime and the below photo shows is of Third Man director Carol Reed and writer Graham Greene.

In Search Of The Third Man

Mary Russell at the Irish Times takes a tour through Venna that retraces one of my favorite films, The Third Man.

The film The Third Man, made in 1948, only three years after WWll ended, shows the underbelly of this elegant city almost totally destroyed by Allied bombs, divided like Berlin and patrolled by the same Allied Forces, its postwar shortages making it a haven for black marketeers. Harry Lime, played by Orson Welles, is an American racketeer living in the Russian quarter where, our guide tells us, most of the criminals lived. Why? Because the Russians were easily bribed. Harry’s friend Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) turns up to look for him and finally locates him, Harry’s hiding place betrayed by his loving cat.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/travel/2012/0414/1224314659446.html

Above is a photo of Orson Welles as the criminal Harry Lime in the film and below is a photo of the director of The Third Man, Carol Reed, and the writer of the film, Graham Greene.