Editing The Third Man (section)

===Development===
Before writing the screenplay, Graham Greene worked out the atmosphere, characterisation, and mood of the story by writing a novella as a [[film treatment]]. He never intended for it to be read by the general public, although it was later published under the same name as the film. The novella is narrated in the first person from Calloway's perspective. In 1948, Greene met [[Elizabeth Varley|Elizabeth Montagu]] in Vienna; she gave him tours of the city, its sewers, and some of its less reputable nightclubs. She also introduced Greene to [[Peter Smollett|Peter Smolka]], the central European correspondent for ''The Times'', who gave Greene stories about the black market in Vienna.<ref>{{cite journal |journal=The Guardian |date=10 July 1999 |title=Harry in the shadow |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/jul/10/books.guardianreview10 |access-date=23 December 2015}}</ref>

During the shooting of the film, the final scene was the subject of a dispute between producer [[David O. Selznick]] and Reed. While Selznick preferred the hopeful ending of the novella, with Martins and Anna walking away arm-in-arm, Reed refused to end the film on what he felt was an artificially happy note.<ref>{{cite book|title=Encountering Directors|first=Charles Thomas|last=Samuels|publisher=G. P. Putnam's Sons|year=1974|pages=169–170|isbn=0399110232}}</ref> Greene later wrote: "One of the very few major disputes between Carol Reed and myself concerned the ending, and he has been proved triumphantly right."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/02/20/specials/greene-astory.html |title='The Third Man' as a Story and a Film |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=19 March 1950 |access-date=2 September 2013}}</ref> Selznick's contribution, according to himself, was mainly enlisting Cotten and Welles and producing the shortened US version.<ref>{{cite book |last=Haver |first=Ronald |title=David O. Selznick's Hollywood |publisher=[[Alfred A. Knopf]] |date=12 October 1980 |isbn=978-0-394-42595-5}}</ref>

Through the years there was occasional speculation that Welles was the ''de facto'' director of ''The Third Man'' rather than Reed. [[Jonathan Rosenbaum]]'s 2007 book ''Discovering Orson Welles'' calls this a "popular misconception",<ref>Rosenbaum, Jonathan, ''Discovering Orson Welles'', University of California Press; 1st edition (2 May 2007), p.25 {{ISBN|0-520-25123-7}}</ref> although Rosenbaum did note that the film "began to echo the Wellesian theme of betrayed male friendship and certain related ideas from ''[[Citizen Kane]]''."<ref name=rosenweb>Rosenbaum, Jonathan. [http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/?p=6466 ''Welles in the Limelight''] ''JonathanRosenbaum.net'' n.p. 30 July 1999. Web. 18 October 2010.</ref> Rosenbaum writes that Welles "didn't direct anything in the picture; the basics of his shooting and editing style, its music and meaning, are plainly absent. Yet old myths die hard, and some viewers persist in believing otherwise."<ref name=rosenweb/> Welles himself fuelled this theory in a 1958 interview, in which he said "entirely wrote the role" of the Harry Lime character and that he'd had an unspecified role in making the film—more than the contribution he made to ''[[Journey into Fear (1943 film)|Journey into Fear]]''—but that it was a "delicate matter" he did not want to discuss because he wasn't the film's producer.<ref>Welles, Orson; Epstein, Mark W. ''Orson Welles: Interviews''. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2002. Print.</ref> However, in a 1967 interview with [[Peter Bogdanovich]], Welles said that his involvement was minimal: "It was Carol's picture".<ref>Bogdanovich, Peter, ''This Is Orson Welles'', Da Capo Press (21 March 1998) p. 220, {{ISBN|978-0-306-80834-0}}</ref> Welles did contribute some of the film's best-known dialogue. Bogdanovich also stated in the introduction to the DVD: 
<blockquote>However, I think it's important to note that the look of ''The Third Man''—and, in fact, the whole film—would be unthinkable without ''[[Citizen Kane]]'', ''[[The Stranger (1946 film)|The Stranger]]'' and ''[[The Lady from Shanghai]]'', all of which Orson made in the '40s, and all of which preceded ''The Third Man''. Carol Reed, I think, was definitely influenced by Orson Welles, the director, from the films he had made.<ref>Janus Films. ''The Janus Films Director Introduction Series presents Peter Bogdanovich on Carol Reed's'' The Third Man.</ref></blockquote>