ALL of Orson Welles in "The Third Man" - '49 - HQ

This is ALL the footage of Awesome Orson (apart from the chase round the sewers at the end - and half of that used doubles) in the film. His total on-screen time is less than ten minutes.

And yet it is a measure of the man that if you ask any film-fan who starred in The Third Man, almost all will answer "Orson Welles" - despite the fact that during its one hundred and four minutes (97 in the U.S. version) Joseph Cotten was in nearly every shot! Shame!!!

Oh and anecdotally, this uploader has RIDDEN that big wheel. Four were made, for assorted expositions, but only the Vienna one survives. It took heavy damage during WW2, but since it was to the Viennese what the Eiffel Tower is to Parisians - it was restored.

You get a great view from the top.

[two footnotes (if you've reached this far!): Orson improvised the "cuckoo-clock" tag - Graham Greene was on set and approved it. In fact, he said he wished HE'D thought of it!

And notice Mr Welles' trademark Overlapping Dialogue, Rare in those days - and even now.]

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Joseph
• Cotten
• Vienna
• Big
• Wheel

[belisariusorb]

From 2 minutes is the greatest film dialogue ever

[LucyLizard87]

Awe. Some.

[morgantown1]

This was on TCM last night, my favorite movie

[gigsing]

I wish I was as amoral as Lime. Life would be a lot smoother.

[iktinous]

@morpheusatloppers that makes sense, it has Welles' reckless panache.

[morpheusatloppers]

@iktinous If I may chip in - the story as I've always heard it, is the "cuckoo-clock" part was dreamed up by Orson and he put it into the take - then asked Greene (who was on set) if he minded - and Greene said "No - in fact, I wish I'd thought of it."

[tgould7]

The greatest grin in cinema history!

[Oeconomist]

@iktinous—

Since many people take an uncorrect assertion as necessarily true, your “pedantic footnotes” are potentially quite useful. My foot-note here would be that the quip is not in the book, and I'm not sure that it should be attributed to Greene.

In any case, I was not concerned to note that a specific counter-argument was inadequate, not to defend Borgii and war, nor to disparage Switzerland and peace.

[iktinous]

@Oeconomist

..) a particularly bloody and violent history, mostly of inter-cantonal warring. Such was the reputation for swiss savagery that Charles V put them to very effective and devastating effect in 1527 , in the sack of...Rome!!!

[iktinous]

@Oeconomist

As much as I love the line allow me some pedantic footnotes: Greene invented the quip to exhibit Lime's callousness. He knew perfectly well that Leonardo,Michelangelo and co were not 'under the borgias' (nor was italy, for that matter, only the Papal States), but a fair bit later, with Pope Julius II etc. More importantly, and to the detriment of Mr Lime's attractively constructed but specious argument (like the pedantic tone?), Switzerland has enjoyed, if one may use that word,(..)

[Oeconomist]

@alan78456able—

It's a shame for you to lose an argument with a sociopath such as Lime, but the inventions of the Renaissance, like the cuckoo clock and milk chocolate, are still with us. I'm not sure how marginally useful a cuckoo clock would be, as clocks announced the hour audibly before the cuckoo clock; the word “clock” derives from a reference to the bells that they had.

[s33n01d10ts]

@TheClam88 We dont need Ebert to know this one of the greatest films ever made.