The Third Man
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Third Man (1949) is a British film noir directed by Carol Reed and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli and Orson Welles. The screenplay was written by novelist Graham Greene. Greene wrote a novella of the same name in preparation for the screenplay, which was published in 1950.
The film won the 1949 Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, the British Academy Award for Best Film, and an Academy Award for Best Black and White Cinematography in 1950.
In 1999, the British Film Institute selected The Third Man as the best British film of the 20th century; five years later, the magazine Total Film ranked it fourth. The film also placed 57th on the American Film Institute's list of top American films, "100 Years... 100 Movies" in 1998, though the film's only American connection was its executive co-producer, David O. Selznick; the other two, Sir Alexander Korda and Carol Reed, were British. In June 2008, the AFI revealed its "Ten top Ten"—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. The Third Man was acknowledged as the fifth best film in the mystery genre. In 2005, viewers of BBC Television's Newsnight Review voted the film their fourth favourite of all time; it was the only film in the top five made prior to 1970.
