The Third Man on The Living Daylights...

PUCCINIPUCCINI Posts: 70MI6 Agent
in General James Bond Chat
For anyone who has seen the classic film-noir masterpiece directed by Carol Reed and starring Orson welles and Joseph Cotten, there's a bunch of coincidental (or on purposed) similarities with another classic, our great TLD...for start, both are set in the beautiful city of vienna, both have a man who is presumably death (Harry Lime) or captured by the enemy (Georgi Koskov) a woman who is in love with that man, and she is approached by a friend of him (Holly Martins/James Bond). later on both films, both missing men turn out to be the real villain behind a scheme that deals with smuggling some kind of drug (penicilin/heroin. To finish this, there's two persons involved in the third man that even if they weren't on TLD they were part of the bond family, Bernard Lee (M) and director Guy Hamilton, who was assistant director on TTM. also, Orson Welles played Le Chiffre on the Casino Royale 1967 spoof...

I don't know if Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson had The third man on their minds by the time they were adapting Fleming's short story into a screenplay, but it sure turned out to be an excellent 007 adventure...both films have a high rank on my all time favorite films list.

Comments

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 37,860Chief of Staff
    And both films feature a scene on the big wheel.
  • Gassy ManGassy Man USAPosts: 2,972MI6 Agent
    It's a classic, the book and the film, so it's likely quite a few people involved with Bond are influenced by it. But the Bond films are a part of a genre with certain basic elements -- one can see a lot of "North by Northwest," for instance, especially in the earlier Bond films, like "From Russia with Love," as well as "The Prisoner of Zenda," "Golden Earring" and "Notorious," which is so Flemingesque that one can easily see why Cary Grant was considered for Bond. Of course, bear in mind that the spy craze was popularized by the Bond films but by no means started by them.
  • PUCCINIPUCCINI Posts: 70MI6 Agent
    yes of course....I forgot about the big wheel escene..but also the phrase: Baloon mein herr???
  • SteedSteed Posts: 134MI6 Agent
    This is actually quite a deliberate connection. John Glen worked on The Third Man in some capacity and explictly stated he wanted a homage to that film in TLD.
  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,948MI6 Agent
    Barbel wrote:
    And both films feature a scene on the big wheel.

    Indeed- that was very deliberate.
  • Moore Not LessMoore Not Less Posts: 1,095MI6 Agent
    edited March 2007
    Steed wrote:
    This is actually quite a deliberate connection. John Glen worked on The Third Man in some capacity and explictly stated he wanted a homage to that film in TLD.

    Are you sure about John Glen? I know Guy Hamilton worked on The Third Man. He was assistant director and doubled Orson Welles (Harry Lime) in a couple of scenes.
  • SteedSteed Posts: 134MI6 Agent
    Yeah, I'm fairly certain he said that on the 'Inside The Living Daylights' DVD documentary- what he was doing on the film eludes me, he was pretty young at this point!
  • Moore Not LessMoore Not Less Posts: 1,095MI6 Agent
    Steed wrote:
    Yeah, I'm fairly certain he said that on the 'Inside The Living Daylights' DVD documentary- what he was doing on the film eludes me, he was pretty young at this point!

    I checked John Glen's profile at the imdb (not the most reliable source). It states he was assistant sound editor (uncredited) on The Third Man. Well, you learn something new every day.
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