Carol Reed

Carol Reed

Another feature of British Film
1) There were tightly edited, intelligently written contemporary dramas.
2) The majority of these were romances, thrillers, and mysteries

The Third Man (1949)
1)Tells the tells the story of an American in Vienna (Joseph Cotton) and his
    relationship with his seemingly dead friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles).
2) The film is based on the novel by Graham Greene.
3) Orson Welles appears in less than ten minutes of the film as Harry Lime.
     yet it is often referred to as Welles film. 

Michael Wilmington on performance in The Third Man:

"The Third Man is one of those rare films that captured its audience immediately and was regarded as a classic almost from its first release. It marks one of those unusual conjunctions of script, director, subject, cast and setting—and, of course, music—in which everything works. Graham Greene’s script, based on his novel, is a brilliant evocation of the urban battleground of good and evil, with just the right proportions of drama, atmosphere, action, rich character and tense construction. The acting ensemble is superb, with the mixture of Americans and Europeans in the cast creating an ideal balance: Trevor Howard as the pragmatic and brutally unsparing Calloway; Bernard Lee as the gentle Sergeant Paine; Wilfred Hyde-White as Crabbin, the slightly addled literary entrepreneur; Ernst Deutsch as the sinister, ferrety “Baron” Kurtz; Alida Valli, exuding fatalistic romance as Anna; and those two refugees from Citizen Kane, Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten, as the two old friends torn asunder, the dark side and the light, Harry and Holly—their names so similar Anna often confuses them. Welles’ relatively brief performance as Harry Lime is perfection itself: the bemused, lightly condescending, affectionate look with which he greets Holly; the murderous fluency of his Machiavellian story of the cuckoo clock (which Welles himself wrote); or the wild desperation as he flounders in the sewer. This is magnificent, highly charged film acting."

The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949):
Clip from class: Click Here - Merry-go-round scene