THE THIRD MAN

As a child my father told me about the movie: In a city somewhere, a man searches for another man. Everyone he meets tells him that his search is in vain, for the other man is already dead, but he refuses to give up and suddenly he believes he catches a glimpse of the other man’s face in a doorway. Then dad sat down in front of the piano and in his own tiptoeing kind of way he played ‘The Theme from the Third Man’. It made me dream of footsteps echoing in back alleys and a great, green shadow flickering by in the corner of my eye. Every time I heard that melody I had the peculiar feeling of someone observing me from a hidden viewpoint." The Third Man is a project in the form of a performance lecture and a film. It tries to trace the footprints of an elusive entity called ‘The Third Man’. We hear him move between the pins of the music box; a staggering, predestined forward motion in a crude imitation of life. He takes up residence in the ecstatic body of Julie Andrews, turning seven innocent children into musical puppets, each one reduced to a note in the diatonic scale. He is the song of an angel, who with his quill inscribes sound waves directly into human brain tissue. He is in the voice of every pregnant mother, bathing her defenceless foetus in song. (from Erik Bünger)