The days when one could survive in Vienna by hustling penicillin and other drugs are long gone. Today, the only places occupied by Americans, British, French, and Russians are hotel rooms. But you’re not the only ones yearning for post-war Vienna—one filled with smugglers, spies, and, well, black-and-white chase scenes.
To better understand our city’s storied past, we follow in the footsteps of Orson Welles in 1949’s film noir masterpiece, ‘The Third Man’. After the tour, catch a screening in the Opernkino. Then go and visit the most important scenes of the movie and pretend you’re a film noir protagonist.
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All aspects, dangerous details, authentic artefacts, surprising secrets.
After several rapidly cut scenes that give a short overview of the destroyed and occupied Vienna of 1948, the actual story of the film begins. Cue the arrival of Holly Martins, the American pulp author, at Vienna’s Westbahnhof.
The scene where Lime and Martins meet in front of the Riesenrad is perhaps the most famous scene in the film. It ends with the very passage that is accredited to Benito Mussolini in the German version.
In reality it was written by Orson Welles for his character, Harry Lime. Lime to Martins: “In the thirty years under the Borgias there was only war, terror, murder, and blood, but in exchange there was Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. Brotherly love pervades Switzerland, five hundred years of democracy, and peace. And what do we get out of it? The cuckoo clock!”
In the background of the scene is the very archway through which one reaches Michaelerplatz. To the right of the arch is the Lippizaner Museum.
Harry Lime is buried twice in the film, but the film location was always the same, Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof, the second biggest cemetery in Europe.
Alert observers will notice that nearly all the scenes of Harry Lime’s “real” burial were shot around the same Jugendstil monument.
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