On Loca­tion: Har­ry Lime’s Vien­na in The Third Man

“I nev­er knew the old Vien­na before the war with its Strauss music, its glam­our and easy charm,” so opens Car­ol Reed’s 1949 noir, The Third Man. Though it often finds itself at the top of Best British Films lists, the film is inter­na­tion­al through and through thanks to its Vien­nese set­ting; the city then split into four inter­na­tion­al zones with its cen­tre gov­erned by all four. Seen through Reed’s eye, Vien­na is one of the most atmos­pher­ic set­tings ren­dered on film. Such is the director’s effec­tive use of the city that it is one of the few films cov­ered in this col­umn to even boast a city­wide tour to the many moody yet beau­ti­ful locations.

With a script by Gra­ham Greene, The Third Man fol­lows down­trod­den Amer­i­can pulp writer Hol­ly Mar­tins (Joseph Cot­ten). After being invit­ed to Vien­na by his old friend Har­ry Lime (Orson Welles) with the promise of work, he arrives to find out that Lime has been mys­te­ri­ous­ly killed by a car. Try­ing his best to nav­i­gate the com­pli­cat­ed pol­i­tics of the city, he begins to ques­tion what real­ly hap­pened to his friend, espe­cial­ly after the head of the British zone, Major Cal­loway (Trevor Howard), implies that Lime was at the head of a vile peni­cillin rack­et. With the ini­tial help of Lime’s girl­friend Anna (Ali­da Val­li), Mar­tins begins to dis­cov­er that not all is what it seems regard­ing his old friend and is left with the ulti­mate conun­drum: who was the third man car­ry­ing Lime’s body on the night of his death?

With lim­it­ed time in the cap­i­tal, I opt­ed to go in search of three of the film’s most piv­otal loca­tions. Of course, there are more: the famous sew­ers in which the film’s dra­mat­ic final sequences take place; the Café Mozart – one of the most cel­e­brat­ed cof­fee estab­lish­ments in the famous­ly café cul­tured metrop­o­lis – seen in the film (but actu­al­ly filmed at Neuer Markt) where Greene wrote his orig­i­nal treat­ment; and the many dra­mat­ic streets and build­ings seen through­out. But one of these streets stands out in par­tic­u­lar: the door­way where Lime is first seen.

Mar­tins is drunk and wan­der­ing back from an unsuc­cess­ful vis­it to Anna’s. He spots some­one in the dark­ened door­way being fussed affec­tion­ate­ly by a cat. Is some­one tail­ing him? In what is one of cinema’s most famous entrances, we see Lime lit up in the door­way by the light cast from a win­dow before a car gets in the way and he seem­ing­ly dis­ap­pears into thin air; much like the star who played him who was infa­mous­ly absent for the major­i­ty of the film’s shoot.

The door­way itself is on an unusu­al side road called Mölk­er Steig, though its address is 8 Schreyvo­gel­gasse, just round the cor­ner from the his­tor­i­cal Café Landt­mann. The door­way is slight­ly more lav­ish and bright­ly paint­ed now but is most­ly unchanged. Equal­ly, the slop­ing road, the build­ing where Anna and Harry’s flat was and the whole set-up of the road for the sequence is as it was. If Lime tried to run down the alley­way in real­i­ty, how­ev­er, he’d come to a nar­row pas­sage­way and a set of steps rather than the open square and his route to the sewers.

The road is used in oth­er films too, undoubt­ed­ly as a nod to Lime’s entrance. We see it var­i­ous­ly in Michael Winner’s Scor­pio in which Burt Lan­cast­er wan­ders and dri­ves past it, and in Richard Linklater’s Before Sun­rise in which Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) idly walk past it on their wan­der through the city.

Con­sid­er­ing that Welles is only in The Third Man for mere min­utes of screen time com­pared to his co-stars, it is his image and scenes that dom­i­nate. He oozes charm and malig­nance simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, a dan­ger­ous­ly charis­mat­ic mon­ster. This is nev­er truer than in the film’s sequence on the Fer­ris Wheel. After find­ing out that Lime isn’t real­ly dead, Mar­tins forces Lime’s accom­plices to arrange a meet­ing with the elu­sive rack­e­teer. The choice of meet­ing place is a Fer­ris Wheel, the Wiener Riesen­rad in the Wurstel­prater amuse­ment park. The pair even take a ride and dis­cuss the future of what could hap­pen to them, a scene filled with vague threats and men­ace, almost in con­tra­dic­tion to the place they’re in.

The Wiener Riesen­rad is still work­ing today and, aside from a few mod­i­fi­ca­tions, is still as it’s seen in the film. Though now a Vien­nese land­mark in itself, the wheel was actu­al­ly designed by two British engi­neers in cel­e­bra­tion of Emper­or Franz Josef I’s gold­en jubilee in 1897. It was saved from demo­li­tion dur­ing the peri­od of World War One sim­ply down to a lack of funds, and has since gone on to have a healthy cin­e­mat­ic career, not just in The Third Man. The wheel is seen in Before Sun­rise where Céline and Jesse share their first kiss, in a par­tic­u­lar­ly snowy faux back­drop in Max Ophül’s Let­ter From An Unknown Woman, and even in The Liv­ing Day­lights where James Bond (Tim­o­thy Dal­ton) stops the wheel to seduce Kara (Maryam d’Abo) in one of its cabins.

How­ev­er, its use in The Third Man is the most effec­tive and cer­tain­ly the tens­est. With the theme park hav­ing grown a great deal since the era of Reed’s film, it was dif­fi­cult to shoot from the direc­tion of Mar­tins’ approach due to the array of increas­ing­ly large and gar­ish rides. I opt­ed to get anoth­er shot from the side of the park, cap­tur­ing the wheel as clear­ly as pos­si­ble, even with the scaf­fold­ing cur­rent­ly adorn­ing its sides.

With Lime being buried twice in the film, once for pre­tend as part of the con­spir­a­cy and once for real, it felt right to con­clude the vis­it with a trip to the grave­yard where he was laid to rest. Equal­ly, the film fin­ish­es in this loca­tion and pro­vides one of pop­u­lar cinema’s best and most melan­choly end­ings. Unlike the oth­er loca­tions, the grave­yard is far out of cen­tral Vien­na. I took the Vien­na U‑Bahn to the end of the U3 line to Sim­mer­ing and walked sev­er­al miles along most­ly emp­ty roads until find­ing the entrance to the Wiener Zen­tral­fried­hof. The huge space is most­ly famous for its array of interred com­posers, includ­ing Beethoven, Brahms, Schu­bert and Schoen­berg. Lime was in good company.

The ceme­tery is one of the largest in the world and hous­es the huge St Charles Bor­romeo church in its cen­tre. With the many avenues of graves to walk, it took a long time search­ing to find the par­tic­u­lar spot used in the film. The very final shot of the grave­yard shows it at its autum­nal best, with leaves falling along the seem­ing­ly end­less avenues. Even­tu­al­ly I found the right avenue, marked equal­ly by the hand­ful of jet-black head­stones seen to the left of the shot.

The scene in ques­tion sees Mar­tins attempt­ing one last time to get through to Anna; still in amorous throes for Lime. Opt­ing to stay behind and talk to her rather than accept Major Calloway’s lift, Mar­tins jumps off and naive­ly waits by a cart, believ­ing that he may be lucky this time in spite of hav­ing fin­ished off Anna’s lover. Reed’s shot seems to last for an eter­ni­ty as Anna slow­ly catch­es up with him. Just as she approach­es with­in dis­tance to talk to Mar­tins, she ignores him and walks on. Noth­ing was ever cer­tain in The Third Man, noth­ing except Vien­na. I was equal­ly alone like Mar­tins on my vis­it, joined only by the occa­sion­al con­struc­tion lor­ry, but the loca­tion was the per­fect end to a day’s wan­der­ing after Lime’s ghost.

With thanks to Polaroid Orig­i­nals.