Price: $7,500
English writer.
Collection of 8 Mimeograph Manuscripts for the motion picture, The Third Man, based on the novel by Graham Greene, comprising the Treatment, the Screenplay, the Second Draft Script, the Synopsis and Dialogue Screenplay, Dialogue Cutting Continuity Script, Release Script Reels 1 – 12, Narrator Portuguese Script, and Spanish Script.
The 1949 London Film Productions film, The Third Man, was directed by Carol Reed and produced by David O. Selznick. It stars Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard and Orson Welles (who is said to have written all his own lines in the film). The Third Man is considered a movie ahead of its time, more a neo-noir of the late 1960’s or early 1970’s, than the 40’s thriller that it was.
Reed defied convention by shooting entirely on location in Vienna where, in the aftermath of World War II, there were mountains of rubble, and a desperate black market economy. Welles’ famous entrance (as Harry Lime), described in these scripts, is considered one of the greatest in movie history. It begins on a light in an apartment window; the sequence finishes with the shot pushing in Welles’ face, mysterious and teasing. The Third Man won an Academy Award for best cinematography in 1950. It’s possible that as many camera shots are tilted as held straight in the film’s unusual visual style.
Author Graham Greene credits some of the best lines in The Third Man to Orson Welles (as Harry Lime), including this one, following that unforgettable entrance: “You know what the fellow said: In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”
Treatment: legal folio, 119 leaves, undated. Screenplay: quarto, 222 leaves, undated. Includes the opening credit sequence and numbered shots. Synopsis and Dialogue Screenplay: folio (10 by 14 inches), 119 leaves, March 1950. Prepared by Sidney G. Samuels, on imprinted stationery of the Selznick Releasing Organization, Inc. The script contains a three-page synopsis followed by a character sketch by Samuels, describing the events of the film. Each page is divided into columns and indicate scene number, footage start and stop points, footage count, complete dialogue, spoken dialogue, and limited directions. Dialogue Cutting Continuity Script: quarto, 141 leaves, March 11, 1950.
Normal wear. Housed in four, custom designed, blue quarto leather boxes.
This item is associated with these categories in our inventory:
- Literature – English/Irish
- Motion Pictures