Wednesday, December 19, 2007

"Wrong Geometries in The Third Man"

There is a fantastic essay on The Third Man in the latest issue of film magazine Rouge:

Few films are as closely identified with a city as The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) is with Vienna. Over the years, seemingly endless journalistic, academic, and cinephilic attention has been devoted to the physical locations used in the film. To the present day, guided tours take visitors through the squares, onto the Ferris wheel and even into the sewers that Carol Reed’s film transformed into icons of the city. This analysis provides a counterpoint to the popular fascination with The Third Man’s locations, focusing instead on how the film diverges from its setting, and how it abstracts and reorientates the city’s spaces. The specific site of divergence explored is that of the line.

The same issue has an essay on David Lynch too, which will probably make more sense if one has seen his paintings and artworks.

Greencine daily has more links.

2 comments:

Madhuri said...

I loved the Vienna shown in The third man - and now you tell me it was not the real one! It was a rather iconic filming, and I found appealing even the underground drudgery.
I quite liked the movie, btw, on my second and more sustained effort. And more than anything I loved the slightly charred, frozen in time city, always shown at night.

Alok said...

check this out. scroll down to see the list of real locations.there are guided third man city tours too. have never been there myself of course.

Vienna shown in the movie is real, only it is seen through a very distorted perspective.