Of all the oddities that make The Third Man so compelling, the oddest is that its sublime Vienna setting was an accident. If things had gone differently, the film – released 75 years ago, on 31st August 1949 – would have been set in London.
The original idea came from the screenwriter, Graham Greene, as he cooked up the movie with the director, Carol Reed, and the producer, Alexander Korda.
Greene showed them a few lines he’d jotted on the back of an envelope:
‘I had paid my last farewell to Harry a week ago, when his coffin was lowered into the frozen February ground, so that it was with incredulity that I saw him pass by, without a sign of recognition, among the host of strangers in the Strand.’
It was Korda who said the Strand
