Set-Jetting, Film Pilgrimage and The Third Man

Abstract

The Third Man (1948) is a classic of world cinema. The noir works, because cinematic space is used to make Vienna a character in the film. Carol Reed used the ruins and sewers to create, not just atmosphere but a metaphor for the moral state of Europe, 3 years after WWII. Sixty years on, Frederick Baker used a praxis called ‘Projectionism’ to frame its memory. Clips were projected onto the locations where they were originally shot. The original film becomes the source of its own creation – its own frame of memory. There are three frames of memory. The second frame of memory is the oral history of the surviving members of the film crew. A third frame of memory is the Third Man tourist industry, taking film buffs to see the original locations: two rival tours, a cinema and a museum all feeding off foreign cinema-goers’ desire to compare fact with fiction.