Within days of the end of the fighting, i.e. in April 1945 still, the provisional city government was constituted and the political parties re-emerged. The situation of the city was far from encouraging. More than 20 percent of the housing stock was partly or completely destroyed, almost 87,000 flats had become uninhabitable. In the urban area, more than 3,000 bomb craters were counted, many bridges were in shambles, sewers, gas and water pipes had suffered severe damage. The imperative of the immediate after war period was to solve the most basic problems and get the city back to some degree of working order.

On July 4, 1945 an agreement was reached on the First Control Agreement and the occupation zones. The Soviet zone encompassed Lower Austria under the borders of 1937, Burgenland and the Mühlviertel region in northern Upper Austria; the United States took the southern part of Upper Austria and Salzburg; the British Styria, Carinthia, and East Tyrol; the French North Tyrol and Vorarlberg.

In the decade following World War II, Austria was occupied by British, French, American, and Soviet forces, and Vienna was divided into five zones, including an international zone, covering the Innere Stadt (“Inner City”). In 1955 the State Treaty, by which the country regained independence, was signed with the four occupying powers, and Vienna became once again the capital of a sovereign Austria.

The Third Man had its London premiere on 2 September 1949, going on general release the following month. In the intervening weeks the film was shown in competition at the Cannes film festival, where it won the Palme d'or, the festival's top prize. The American release was delayed by various contractual wrangles until February 1950.

LONDON, Dec. 15. The most popular film in Britain in 1949 is "The Third Man," a British production directed by Carol Reed and starring Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton, and Trevor Howard.
The film was on top in the annual box-office survey conducted by the editor of the "Kinematograph Weekly."

Carol Reed filmed The Third Man in Vienna in 1948, during that brief, uneasy truce between the end of the second world war and the onset of the cold war. It won an Oscar and the Golden Palm at Cannes but it wasn't a hit in Vienna. The local critics were underwhelmed.

Graham Greene's sensitive research and Carol Reed's documentary style make "The Third Man" a unique testimony of post-war Vienna.