THE THIRD MAN

The story for the motion picture which has had a sensationally successful critical and popular reception, this although it may not be as "finished" (the author) as the film for which it was written, is still a highly effective experience in suspense. Against the backdrop of the strangely, silent streets of postwar Vienna, this follows the search for the third man said to have witnessed the death of Harry Lime as it is undertaken by Rollo Martins, Lime's friend of twenty years, a rather fatuous and adolescent American. And as the inquiry leads from those who know Harry to the girl who loved him, to the folio of a man from Scotland Yard, the climax is reached with the resurrection of the dead man and a stalk through the sewers of the city. The case here, the use of occasional characterization, the unrelieved and undeviating tension demonstrate again a mastery of this medium.