I half expected to see Welles run towards me

Harry Mount celebrates the 60th anniversary of Carol Reed’s masterly film The Third Man with a tour of Harry Lime’s postwar Vienna — the true star of the movie

Vienna

Six times a week, the Burg Kino cinema in Vienna shows The Third Man in its small Studio Theatre. ‘It’s best that you book,’ said the polite young man behind the counter in perfect English, when I came along in the morning to see if there were any tickets for the 10.45 p.m. show on Friday night. ‘We sometimes get tour parties and the place is packed out.’

I needn’t have booked after all. Though I was there in honour of The Third Man’s birthday — it’s been 60 years since Carol Reed built his masterly vision out of Graham Greene’s screenplay — the only people in the audience were me, two teenage girls — one in a lilac puffer jacket, another with lurid ginger hair — and two male loners who showed every sign of being regulars.