How do 'The Third Man' ,director Carol Reed and 'Insomnia',director Erik Skjoldbjaerg use the conventions of a thriller

The Chase scenes

In Insomnia and The Third Man they both have similar chase scenes which involves the detective (Jonas and Holly Martins, even though Holly Martins isn't a professional detective he does take on the role in the movie) chasing after the criminal. In The Third Man they use a sewer to chase the criminal through which creates a maze because there are several places for the criminal to run too and it is difficult for the detectives to find the criminal. Carol Reed uses backlighting to create silhouettes to create the feeling of being followed. In Insomnia they use the fog to create the same feeling The Third Man does. Jonas is lost in the fog while trying to chase the killer, and the effect of the fog creates the feeling of being lost and blind because you can't see anything, so Jonas doesn't know what he is running towards or shooting at which creates suspense.

Femme Fatales

A 'Femme Fatale' is french for fatal woman. The Femme Fatale is a woman who is seductive and leads men into dangerous and compromising situations. The Femme Fatale uses her beauty, charm and sexual allure. In The Third Man the Femme Fatale is Anna who is an actress and the lover of Harry Lime who faked her a passport so she wouldn't be sent out of Vienna. Anna is a Femme Fatale because she uses Harry Lime's attraction for her to her own advantage because he can help her from being deported, and Martins set up Lime for Anna's freedom and at the end of the movie Anna ignores Holly Martins which shows she used Martins like she did Lime. In Insomnia the Femme Fatale is less obvious because she could be the murdered girl at the beginning of the movie, Tanja, or Tanja's class friend Froya who Jonas seduces in his car on the way to seeing the location of Tanja's murder.

The big wheel and the cable car

In The Third Man and in Insomina they use the big wheel and the cable car so the arguments leave the audience in suspense because the big wheel and the cable car create tension and isolation because of the small space and being high off the ground. The arguments which happen inside the big wheel and the cable car make you think that someone is going to be pushed out of the big wheel or the cable car so the audience is left in suspense about what is going to happen.
The use of light and dark

In The Third Man Carol Reed uses strong key light to create shadows, and the lighting also makes the black and white much stronger and the white and black contrast really well againist each other. In Insomnia the lighting is very pale, and the palette is a lot of blues and grey's, and later on in the movie when Jonas kills his partner by accident he tries to shut out the light which makes his room totally dark, and in the picture above you can see the light trying to push through which is really effective in the movie. In The Third Man the colour palette is very limited because of the movie being made in black and white but this helps the lighting make the shadows more intense for example in the chase scene in the sewer you see the shadow of Harry Lime but the audience and the chaser aren't sure exactly where he is.