According to the American Film Institute, the film “The Third Man” is American. There is one small problem with this: it is a British film through and through. The director was British (Carol Reed); the writer (Graham Greene) was British, and of the three producers only one was American (the others being British and Hungarian). The film was made on location in Vienna with additional work in a British studio.
So how on earth can anyone consider it to be an American film ? Interestingly the AFI seems to make a habit of this – in their 1998 list of great films, some of the films leap out at me as being British :-
- Lawrence of Arabia
- The Bridge on the River Kwai
- Doctor Zhivago
- A Clockwork Orange
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
Of that list, there may be some debate about the last two, but both were directed by an American directory after he had chosen to live in Britain. Both were written by British writers, and the sound requirements of 2001 could only be met at the time by the use of a British studio.
The trouble with claiming that several of the greatest films ever made were American when they were in fact British, undermines the British film industry. And it’s not as if the American film industry is short on great films!