Rating: 
Summary: They don't get any better.
Review: Certainly among the top five movies ever made, Sir Carol Reed's 'The Third Man' is a masterpiece from every perspective- script, plot, setting, performances, cinematography, editing, music, direction; plus the "long walk" scene is one of great endings in cinema history. Just be sure to see a clean unedited print; the DVD is the best version currently available to the general public. (At one time very butchered versions of this great film were being shown on television.)
Rating:
Summary: Perfect
Review: When I throw a penny in the wishing well I wish Hollywood could make movies half as good as The Third Man. This movie is written and directed so well. Many scenes stand out in my mind like the Ferris wheel, and the sewer chase. Criterion collection has made this film enjoyable. The picture is almost flawless. I don't think this movie could work in color. The black and white scenes work to enhance the streets and the sewer along with cinematography. This is a classic and should be watched by anyone calling themselves a movie fan.
Rating:
Summary: Forget Citizen Kane--this is the best film ever made
Review: Why?One, it's beautifully, imaginatively shot--the best noir work ever done, the best black and white film ever. Two, it's got the first score to that was ever truly integral, rather than decorative to the plot. There are wordless stretches of this film that really are the first--and still the best--music videos. Three, no other film has achieved art house aspirations of context and subtext, object and metaphor while sticking to a tight thriller plot, and mixing in a little humor to boot. It mixes real depth of ideas with Hollywood thrills (something the Coen brothers will NEVER EVER achieve). Four, the film tackles huge themes -- the European nightmare, what America is in 1945 and what it would become, the meaninglessness of words in the modern world, the thin line between black market maneuvering and legitimacy in the world of money--all while seeming to streak by the heavy stuff in a slick whodunit vehicle. Five, the last few moments are the best convergence of image and music in film history, and they wordlessly encapsulate the message of the plot--the American doesn't get it. (For fun, watch the very last moments of the Year of Living Dangerously -- it's Peter Weir's hugely more hopeful answer to this scene). Six, Orson Welles is one of the top five villains in film history, a perfect combination of humor, savvy, practicality, and cold-blooded insanity. He's a lot closer to what real evil looks like than, say, Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter, who in comparison comes off as a totally implausible cartoon character. Seven, countless images in this film have influenced countless films, from the sublime (like Down by Law) to the ridiculous (like The Matrix -- as frightening as this sounds, Keanu, who is forever a beat behind the story, is Joseph Cotten). Eight, The Third Man isn't just a great film. It's a great movie. The surface level is just as fun as the deeper stuff, so you can watch it any way you like. Get this DVD.
Rating: 
Summary: That Zither Music Just Stays With You!
Review: Do you know those times when a musical score helps to define a movie and does it so well that the movie and its music become intertwined? Well, the zither score composed by Anton Karas for The Third Man is one such musical score . . . and the film itself is no slouch either. Carol Reed's The Third Man is a movie of shadows, darkness, and lurking evil around every street corner. It's also a movie for the ages. Into postwar Vienna comes Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton), a hack writer who travels across the Atlantic to meet old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles). Little does Martins know that Lime has died soon before his arrival, or has he??? As Martins tries to discover how his friend died, the answers only spawn more questions. Soon a sinister plot emerges that involves a British officer, a mysterious girlfriend, and the demands of a desperate local black market economy. It's been said that Orson Welles first appearance in the film is the greatest entrance of a villian in cinema history. I'm not sure if that's entirely true but I will admit that his speech in the Ferris wheel is jarringly insightful - maybe the human condition does hopelessly intertwine good and evil to the point where one must always be associated with the other - just like zither music and The Third Man.
Rating:
Summary: A terrific thiller/noir
Review: This may be one of my favorite DVD's of all time. The transfer is brilliant and the film itself is a great ride. Following the journey of American Pulp Writer Holly Martins(Joseph Cotton) to Vienna soon after WWII in search of his old school chum Harry Lime(Orson Welles) who has offered him a job. To reveal much more of the plot would be a crime, but what follows is an engaging, dark mystery that takes Martins to the heart of blackmarket Vienna, which provides a beautiful backdrop of a wrecked European city. To tell a little, it seems at first that Lime has been killed in a car accident, but martins learns more about the dark side of his friend and the truth of his dissapearance as the story goes on. The film's score, by Anton Karas on the Zither, is haunting and memorable. The crass producers of "xXx" even use it in their disasterous film. British director Carol Reed carefully crafts his story and his direction and use of light, dark, the city, and it's sewers creates a claustrophobic atmosphere that few films can match. It is easy to see why this is considered the greatest British film of the 20th century. This is a must own for any serious DVD collector. The extras include alternate opening voiceovers, a radio play based on the adventures of Harry Lime, and commentary from other directors on the beauty of this film. It is a grand achievement.
Rating:
Summary: Great Movie, Great Features
Review: From the opening note of the soundtrack, you know you are watching a movie with something to say. Cotten and Welles are a great on screen duo and give outstanding performances. The bonus features include a great comparison of the original English version and the American version of this classic. Criterion makes the best and most informative DVD features. The amount of material on this disc is amazing considering it was made over 50 years ago. Worth buying.
Rating: 
Summary: Overrated thriller
Review: I enjoy a good suspense movie and especially enjoy the works of Hitchcock. When I finally had an opportunity to watch The Third Man, I was prepared to be delighted, having heard so many good things about the movie. Unfortunately, I found the movie to be just okay and far from spectacular. There were three essential flaws in this film. For one thing, Joseph Cotten, the hero of the story, is basically unlikable and his motivation to find the killer of his friend Harry Lime hardly is enough to motivate the viewer to care. Secondly, the musical score is not only the same basic tune throughout the movie, it has no relation to the mood of the scene and in fact, its light tone often contradicts the seriousness of the scene. Finally, this is a movie that is overdirected, with some shots at strange angles for no special reason. Probably Carol Reed's direction is in fact the main flaw that is responsible for the other two. The story itself is okay, written by Graham Greene who adapted it from his own novel. Some of the scenes do look nice and the look of postwar Vienna is appropriately glum. Nonetheless, this seems like someone trying to make a Hitchcock movie without really succeeding. Perhaps in some alternate universe, Hitchcock did direct this movie and it turned out well; in this universe, however, we must settle for this one.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Greatest of all time
Review: If you haven't yet eperienced Carol Reed's best work, do so now.
Orson Wells' entrance alone is worth the price of admission.
Rating:
Summary: Greatest film noir?
Review: One of the most striking generic traits of film noir is its iconography of the city. Broad, labyrinthine, boundless, the protagonist is unable to decode the urban landscape. Thus, it can only be endured by fragmentation - cut into palatable little pieces. In "The Third Man," the city of Vienna is literally broken up into quarters (British, French, American, Russian), but it is also visually so. Distortion is produced through tilting of the camera lens and the expressive use of lighting. The first appearance of Harry Lime is one example, where we view only a disembodied shoe, the brief glimpse of an enigmatic face, and an attenuated shadow. The jaunty zither music further exacerbates the disorientation. The iconic ferris wheel is a fairly obvious reference to the incongruities of fate (with its ups and downs), while the subtle reference to Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" confirms the film's insistence on the impossibility of telling a coherent narrative. Harry Lime's demise in the city's sewers mimicks Kurtz's anticlimactic dispatch in "Heart of Darkness" - death is no heroic enterprise, nor is it cathartic; but rather, pathetic and entropic. There are no heroes in "The Third Man," because the possibility of heroism is specifically precluded; people do not transcend the modern landscape, but rather endure it with a kind of fatalistic opportunism. Unforgettable.
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Summary: An atmospheric study in black and white
Review: I'm not one to rave about "glorious black and white" cinematography. Generally speaking, if it was good in black and white, it would be even better in color (although NOT colorized). However, there are exceptions. Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove would not be improved in color, and Orson Welles' Citizen Kane would not even work as well in color, partially because of the "Movietone" and front page photography feel that Welles wanted, but also because color would add nothing to the sharp focus on an ultimately empty icon of an entirely black and white medium. And Sir Carol Reed's The Third Man is a strongly atmospheric film that clearly is better in black and white. It might be said that if there isn't enough light, it is false to pretend to color. Flowers that bloom at night are usually white. It's Vienna, in a winter month, just after WWII. The city is still in ruins and rubble, still occupied by Allied troops. There is a forlorn sense of loss and waste hanging in the air like a dark blanket of gloom, and the citizens still suffer from a shortage of consumer goods and basic medicines; a good part of the economy is still driven by the black market. Spring and a colorful rejuvenation seem remote. And so the sharp black and white Oscar-winning cinematography of Robert Krasker, imaginative and deeply evocative of a great city in darkness, was perfect. From the ornate facades of old buildings to the wet catacombs of the sewers to the suddenly illuminated face of a slyly smirking Orson Welles, the camera carries the story driven by the zither theme, played over and over again, sometimes loud and insistent, sometimes soft and yielding, commenting all the while like an ironic jester. But The Third Man is more than brilliant cinematography set to a haunting melody. The well-chosen cast, led by Joseph Cotton as an urban American who writes pulp Westerns, and Alida Valli (who followed this performance with a long career in the Italian cinema) as the misplaced Anna Schmidt, and Trevor Howard as British Major Calloway, and of course Orson Welles as the dark and mysterious Harry Lime, was excellent all around. The script by Graham Greene from his novel of the same name is intelligent and compelling. The editing and direction by Reed paced the story nicely, neither too sharply cut nor too drawn out because this is a film that demands both quick action sequences and moments of mirthless pause for mood and reflection. This is a great film because almost everything was done right. The result is a work of art that invades and sets up permanent residence in our psyches. I saw this for the first time as a boy many years ago and it remained in my memory as the most mysterious and eerie movie I had ever seen. Seeing it again in the twenty-first century only confirms the experience of that small boy. This is included in the film noir canon, and indeed it represents itself well there. But The Third Man is better understood as a film of stark realism as well as a mystery in the tradition of an older genre that accepts the common standards of human decency as right and correct (as Catholic Graham Greene believed them) and does not give way to amorality or the success of evil. Harry Lime is a man of charm and character, of intelligence and worldly wiles, but he is also a man with a sociopathic personality and a callous disregard for human life other than his own. It is giving away nothing to realize that such a man in Greene's world, in the world of the mystery story--like something from Agatha Christie, perhaps--will not succeed in the end. But what actually does transpire in the end, indelibly marked by the final shot of Anna walking directly in the middle of the road between two matching lines of cold, leafless trees, is from the school of realism, a realism born of nearly a century of intermittent war and recurrent human tragedy for Vienna, for Austria, for most of Europe. There is in this film no compromise with that truth. See this for Orson Welles, the 25-year-old wunderkind director and star of Citizen Kane (1941), here in his early thirties, enjoying the supreme compliment of starring in a film in which are employed, in frank imitation of his work in Citizen Kane, some of his original cinematic techniques.
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