The Third Man (DVD, 2001)

I ordered this movie and it never arrived home. I e-mail the seller, they never answered back to me. I have being buying products fron this web site for more than four years and I never had any problem before. I will like to know what happened to the movie I bought.

Orson Wells is the top billed actor of this movie, but he is in it for no more than 15 minutes. After WW2, Joseph Cotton plays Holly Martins, who is an unemployed writer. He is invited to Vienna, Austria, by Harry Lime (Orson Wells) to be hired for a job, but when Martins gets to Vienna, he finds out that Harry has died due to Lime's being hit by a car. The movie is about Holly's search for the details of his friend's death, which is not easy because different people have different versions of the accident. Plus, some of the witnesses are killed before Holly can interview them.

Holly also meets and falls in love with Anna (Alida Valli), who was Harry's girlfriend and who is devastated by his death. Harry had helped her by forging passport papers. She was a Czech citizen who had escaped Russian control and was living in the American part of Vienna. She becomes the catalyst for the end of the movie.

Even though this movie was made in 1949, the "brand new" version of this movie which I bought had poor sound and poor video. The zither music in the background was unusual but did not play well on this DVD. The filming also highlighted much of Vienna as it looked after WW2, but the fuzzy film discouraged the effects.

Carroll Reed was nominated as Best Director of this movie. He did not win. The movie did however win Best Cinematography.