The Third Man: Enhanced Edition with Film Clips, Script and Archive Material from the Motion Picture

The Kindle-only "The Third Man: Enhanced Edition" is a sort of hybrid. It's the novel - as Graham Greene wrote it - along with scenes from the movie, released in 1949. As Graham points out, the film's screenplay didn't exactly follow the novel (different ending) and this book is actually described as "This undisputed spy classic is now available for the first time with video and photography from the film that inspired the novel." So what came first? The movie or the novel? And if the novel came second, why did Greene give it a different ending? I'm not sure of the answers to those questions, but reading a book that comes with video and audio is a pretty cool experience. (One of the other reviewers of this "book" said the audio/video didn't work on his Kindle or the App. I had no problems with the App on my Ipad, though the video said it wouldn't play on my Ipad. But it DID! Go figure.)The story of the "Third Man" is well known. After WW2, Vienna, as well as Berlin, was occupied by the four allied powers and divided up into four sectors. The city was put "back together" in 1955 when the Soviets left eastern Austria and their Vienna Sector. But the film, showing life in the occupied post-WW2 city, used the bombed out city as background. Life was tough in postwar Vienna and citizens who had survived the war made precarious lives in the wrecked city. A lot of smuggling and black-market activity was a way to earn a living. Harry Lime - American in the movie/British in the book - was a crook extraordinaire. He was wanted by the police and Allied powers for participating in a particularly heinous crime of selling watered-down penicillin that killed and crippled children. Harry Lime, presumed dead in a car accident, has asked his friend, Holly Martins, to join him in Vienna. When Martins shows up, he finds Lime dead and attends his funeral. But was he really dead and how do the Viennese cops try to find him. The book is at its heart, a story of two old friends, one who disillusions himself in the other's eyes. When I saw this bad boy on the Amazon site for the amazing price of $2.99, I grabbed it. Because the audio and video worked for me, I received the full import of the "book". I'm sorry that others didn't and I'd advise checking with Amazon to see why it doesn't work on all Kindles. If it works for you, the audio/video and written combination of the book and movie is intriguing.(Another old movie that was also filmed post war, is "I Was a Male War Bride", with Cary Grant and Ann Sheridan.)

Rollo Martins arrives in Vienna in 1948 to visit his friend Harry Lime, only to find Lime has died under mysterious circumstances and the police do not seem to care. They are only happy he is dead, since they believed Harry Lime to be one of the worst black market racketeers in the city. Rollo begins canvassing Harry's friends and lovers in and around the great bombed-out city, which has now been divided into French, Russian, British, and American zones. International tensions mount as Martins' investigation reveal many unsavory truths.This is a simple story, really, but it hits all the right Cold War spy-thriller noir notes I was looking for. Unfortunately, I could not seem to engage much with the characters. I blame this solely on Ian Thomson's introduction which incredibly managed to spoil every single revelation and plot twist in the entire story.The film The Third Man starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton is an undisputed noir classic, often cited on best-of-all-time movie lists. The legacy of this prose novella by Graham Greene is less clear.Part of the problem is the misperception that the novella is based on the movie. Both the screenplay and the book were written by the same author, and the book was published a year after the film was released. This initially led most people to believe the movie came first, and the book was simply a novelization.Over time, however, the author's own account of his writing process became widely circulated, and it seems the novella actually came first. When he was hired by the studio, Greene had never written a screenplay before, and he quickly became stuck. He decided to write it as a prose story first, then adapt it in the traditional fashion. This did the trick. In fact, in the tradition of generations of Hollywood writers, Greene even changed his own ending.Greene's prose is very clear and memorable, such as these passages:"There was always a conflict in Rollo Martins--between the absurd Christian name and the sturdy Dutch (four generations back) surname. Rollo looked at every woman that passed, and Martins renounced them for ever.""It wasn't a beautiful face--that was the trouble. It was a face to live with, day in, day out. A face for wear.""I knew he hadn't cut Koch's throat, but I wasn't sure that he was quite so innocent as he made out. The man who owns the knife is not always the real murderer."This kindle edition includes the complete novella, the screenplay, as well as clips from the movie if you are reading it on the Fire tablet.

This is a great book and movie, both of which I read and saw quite a number of years ago. Why I wanted to read it again was Harry Lime's observations on Switzerland and freedom and how all that it produced was the cuckoo clock. The comparison was to the tyranny, evil, and brutality of the Italian Renaissance and all of the glorious art that was produced-as is that justified it, In any event, I thought a similar comparison could be made to one of the cultures in our society but it would be politically incorrect to expand upon this thought. I believe this to be one of the more enjoyable and less pontific of Mr. Greene's books and he spares us a bit of his Catholic anguish.

I have the same problem as another reviewer. The videos do not work on my Kindle Fire. Kindle support has been unable to help. The book is great, but don't pay for the "bonus features" version.

For all those who loved the Third Man, this version with some of the original film clips is tops. Sometimes video versions leave the viewer a bit mystified about details, and print readers sometimes fail to experience the vivid dynamics of situations. Here one can experience both clarity and explicitness side by side.

Product description plainly states that the videos included with this book can be viewed in any one of several Kindle apps, including Kindle reader for Android phone. The videos do MPT play on my Android Kindle app, I get the message "This device cannot play videos". I updated the phone app and tried again: same result. I then tried to open this e-book in my browser with the Kindle cloud reader: I only got the message "This item cannot be opened in Kindle Cloud Reader."

Graham Greene's The Third Man is, quite rightly,considered a classic book,and movie.This audio visual version of the novel is absolutely brilliant,bringing the story to life with video clips from the movie,starring Orson Welled and Joseph Cotten.Thoroughly enjoyable.

not bad back up to the film , film speaks for itself

Reads like the film script, great characters and plot.

Ha sido una buena compra ya que al ser de segunda mano el libro resultó bastante barato. Llegó a mi dirección mucho antes de lo previsto, y estaba en muy buen estado, por lo que ha sido un acierto su adquisión

Great archival material. Strange that Rollo gets the girl in the book, but not in the movie. The unhappy ending in the movie is so unAmerican.