The Third Man - Awards and Honours

Awards and Honours

The Third Man won the 1949 Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, the British Academy Award for Best Film, and an Academy Award for Best Black and White Cinematography in 1950.

In 1999 the British Film Institute selected The Third Man as the best British film of the 20th century; five years later, the magazine Total Film ranked it fourth. The film also placed 57th on the American Film Institute's list of top American films in 1998, though the film's only American connections were its executive co-producer, David O. Selznick and actor Orson Welles. (The other two, Sir Alexander Korda and Carol Reed, were of Hungarian and British origin respectively.) In June 2008, the AFI revealed its "10 Top 10"—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. The Third Man was acknowledged as the fifth best film in the mystery genre. In 2005, viewers of BBC Television's Newsnight Review voted the film their fourth favourite of all time; it was the only film in the top five made prior to 1970. The "American Film Institute" chose the film in the following categories:

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies - #57
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills - #75
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:
  • Harry Lime - #37 Villain
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
  • "In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, and they had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." - Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores - Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - Nominated
• 10 Top 10 #5 mystery film

In Vienna there is a 'Third Man Museum' dedicated to the film.