Following the Greene cross code...
Arena - Shadowing The Third Man Sunday, 3 October@9.00pm / BBC FOUR
Book at Bedtime Continuing on Monday, 4October@10.45pm / BBC Radio 4
 TO MARK THE centenary of Graham Greene’s birthday, BBC Four presents a series of films celebrating the life and work of the prolific writer. Arena – Shadowing The Third Man, the definitive documentary about the classic film noir, is at the heart of the centenary screenings. The fractured Europe after the Second World War is perfectly captured in The Third Man. Carol Reed’s thriller is set in Vienna, with a screenplay by Graham Greene and an unforgettable performance by Orson Welles as the mysterious Harry Lime. With unlimited access to the original movie, Arena explores the craft, moral world and furious in-fighting behind the film which ranks with Greene’s finest writing.
The programme revisits the original locations to reveal the drama behind the scenes, including the battles between producers Alexander Korda and David O Selznick, as well as those of Selznick and Greene. It reveals Welles’s shenanigans as he became as elusive as Harry Lime himself in an attempt to up his fee.The programme also tells the incredible story of the film’s music and how Anton Karas, a little-known zither player from cafes in the Vienna Woods, achieved pop stardom all over the world.
On the same evening, Arena – Shadowing The Third Man is accompanied by Arena – Graham Greene (1993); Arena – The Other Graham Greene (1989); and a unique film of Greene in conversation at the NFT.
The Third Man continues this week on Radio 4 as Book at Bedtime, while Norman Sherry’s biography The Life of Graham Greene, just published, is becoming essential reading for Green fans also.
| PUBLISHER: | Jonathan Cape | | | | TITLE: | Life of Graham Greene 1955-1991 Vol 3
|  | | | SERIES: | | | | AUTHOR: | Norman Sherry (Mitchell Distinguished Professor of Literature, Trinity University, Texas, USA) | | | EDITOR: | | | | ISBN: | 0-224-05974-2 | | | FORMAT: | Hardback (pp: 576) 242 x 166mm | | | READERSHIP: | General, Undergraduate, Research/professional | | | SUBJECT: | Biography: General, Novels, Other Prose & Writers: From c 1900 - | | |
 | | This third and final volume of Norman Sherry's biography takes Graham Greene from the very real peril of Cuba to the rigours of the Belgian Congo, through tumultuous Haiti, Nicaragua and Panama, his confrontation with the French mafia, and then into Spain, up to a quiet death at 86, in Switzerland. Sherry illuminates Greene's mind and methods, models and motivation, from his heady success and surprising failure as a playwright; the wrenching loss of his beloved Catherine Walston and the deep but different love affairs that followed; to his final forays into the evil, fulminating trouble spots of the world which beckoned as sirens all his days. |
Started seven years ago and now running its fifth international festival on Graham Greene, The Graham Greene Birthplace Trust is at www.grahamgreenebt.org |