Abstract

Fiction films have been generous in showing real (and fantastic) scenarios of cities in which a story unfolds. In this way, cities and stories have been related and identified forever by the films that recorded them: Manhattan, in Manhattan; Madrid, in The Day of the Beast; Paris, in Amelie; London, in Notting Hill; Rome, in La Dolce Vita; among others.
Vienna remained forever in memory thanks to the unforgettable film by Carol Reed, The Third Man (1949); although a sad Vienna, destroyed by the 2nd World War.
In 2015, I visited Vienna for the first time in my life and made the tours marked by the scenes of the film. The same places, the same streets and squares, the same buildings (now restored) by those who once passed those idols of celluloid: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard and Orson Welles.
With the spirit of architect-urban planner and restorer, I drew my itineraries and compared them with those of the film, to use the resource "fiction cinema" in my architecture and urban planning classes as a technique to sharpen the student's gaze and deepen their knowledge of architectural and urban space.
It was then that I recognized that the magnificent film that the cinema bequeathed us had some traps.
This work shows, scene by scene, those inconsistencies found between the journeys made in the film and those that I made, step by step, recording everything graphically and photographically.