The Third Man
Made: 1949
Cast: Joseph Cotton, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard, Alida Valli, Bernard Lee
Director: Carroll Reed
Screenwriter: Graham Greene
Cinematographer: Robert Krasker
Producer: Carroll Reed, David O. Selznick
“look at those little dots down there. You’re telling me you wouldn’t trade 20 thousand pounds for each dot? Would anyone even notice if they weren’t there?”
Deep inside the echelon of movies in the film vault of things that will live forever lies The Third Man, somewhere close to the top. It is hard to say what there isn’t to like about this movie form 1949- great suspense, great dialogue, amazing music on the zither that is a character of its own, amazing cinematography that always tilts the angle just a little, and an awe-inspiring cast of characters including perhaps an all time best performance from Orson Welles. Movies like this come along once a decade….maybe…and just get every single thing right while also being innovative in their own special ways.
It starts off as a story of man getting an invitation to see his best friend of twenty years who has been living in Vienna, only to find when he arrives that his friend Harry has just been killed. Everyone talks about Harry before he appears, In conversations about his personality to how he used to make them laugh or how good of a boyfriend he was to Anna, the woman Holly finds performing in a theater and is instantly smitten with. When try to figure out just how Harry died, we are introduced to people that don’t want to talk to Holly like the hotel Porter character who notices there was not only two but a third man around after the car wreck, to a doctor Vinkle and a man who can only be described as a mix of a failed Nazi and homosexual who all try and convince Holly he should leave town and just not worry about such things; its is best to move on” they keep saying.
In addition to this, Holly Martin is noticed by the local police chief Calloway, a vey droll cop (Trevor Howard) as someone who probably didn’t know the seedy business his friend was up to, he tells him after noticing him drunk several times “you were born to be murdered.” His loyal deputy who happens to be a huge fan of Hollys writings, as he write pulp westerns. We are not supposed to take Holly as a serious writer, as when asked at a book convention who his favorite authors are and what “despondent” means, he seems to have no real depth. Even the henchman’s dog and Anna’s cat seem to play major roles in the movie as to hints to what is going to happen next, as the mystery unfolds and Harry Lime seems to be a darker and darker figure as an opportunist at any cost and racketeer. Anna’s loyalty to Harry no matter what she discovers about his dealings is unapproachable, as she says “He always knew just the right person to talk to” when speaking about how he helped her forge her passport and how once Holly tries to send her back to her home country of Czechoslovakia, she refuses to get on the train out of loyalty to Harry.
You have to talk about Orson Welles first and foremost in the movie, as her doesn’t appear until after the first hour and you are so intriguing by the details of the mystery that you sort of forget he is supposed to be the main attraction. But once he appears as Harry Lime, alive and well and hiding in a staircase illuminated by a neighbors drawn curtain you cannot forget that expressive face. Welles plays Lime as a human being so evil and lacking a conscience that he nor longer cares about his friend or his lover or what happens to them, he even gets on a Ferris wheel ride with Holly and proceeds to talk about pushing him out while admiring, “look at those little dots down there. You’re telling me you wouldn’t trade 20 thousand pounds for each dot? Would anyone even notice if they weren’t there?” Welles reportedly wrote his own dialogue on the movie (or did he) His famous speech about the cuckoo clock being a neutral Switzerland claim to fame has stood the test of time very well, but honestly every part of the expressive face of Harry Lime is the best part of this movie.
The Third Man is a faced paced movie, not only in dialogue, but also the transitions for scene to scene. Just when a slide show is starting to become repetitive or boring, the screen shots start speeding up to condense the information. The movie does a great balancing act of taking for granted you get the gist of something, but also stopping to explain things so they all make sense. Dialogue: so much of the Dialogue is in German its kind of funny, why didn’t they use subtitles? Is everything implied or is it just supposed to not be important, proving communication is non verbal; if the Third Man was ever remade it would definitely contain subtitles and honestly have the movie is in another language. The are great lines of dialogue in the movie, some from Harry Lime’s character (the only part of the screenplay Welles tampered with) but man other form Graham Greene’s amazing screenplay. Greene served a s a spy for the British during World War II, so much of this is very true to life.
The cinematography is beyond intriguing. First, influence by Orson Welles Citizen Kane, the dramatic heft of shadow and light used on every street corner, children look huge coming form far away and balloon salesman’ silhouettes look like monsters. The sewers shine heavily and are far form dark and scary, but still contain many crevasses to hide in once Harry Lime tries to escape. Basically, in glorious black/white, everything is very bright or very dark there is not a lot of in between. The titled camera angles are influenced by movies like The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, German expressionists form the silent era that had to be more expressive- in many ways Third Man has qualities of the best silent cinema. When going underground, the manhole covers are spiked and feel clumsy to operate. In one scene that again harks back to Citizen Kane, a part is placed in a room for almost a jump-scare effect while Holly Martin evades his pursuers. The movie get more humor out of awkward placements and situations than jokes for laughs,. The music Anton Karas zither also pops at up at just the write times, and expresses who the character feels- never before has a strange film score helped a movies out like this.
Third Man plays like the ultimate film noir adventure in many ways, the pinnacle of the 1940’s. The setting in war torn Vienna, is split into combat zones most WWII, part of it is occupied by German, part by Russia, people cannot easily go to one or the other except using a specialized passport (part of Anna’s issue that was fixed by her boyfriend Harry Lime). In most movies a love story would form between Holly and Anna, but instead the whole romance is very dour, gloomy, and one sided from Holly. Anna never reciprocates his feelings, and the movie comes more about how Anna protects Lime no matter what he has done and accepts him for who he is, where as Holly fights a moral conundrum to either help the police bring a murderer and criminal to justice of help his friend of 20 years. Once Holly sees the effects of Lime’s diluted penicillin on innocent women and children, AND after a new comrade in arms is shot in the pursuit in the sewers, Holly feels he has no choice. Its odd that Welles character elicits any sympathy at all, he is quite the scoundrel, I do believe any once else in this acting role besides role would be mor of a typical Hollywood Villain. Welles directed a movie called The Stranger form 1946 that has a similar story to this one, and a lot of the ambiguity of right and wrong typical in film noir is on overkill in that film, but The Third Man takes only the good and none of the bad of what cam before and creates an entertaining and mesmerizing movie experience that influenced everything after form James Bond movies to the Bourne Ultimatum, to basically any spy/espionage movie hereafter. Bernard Lee, who plays Major Paine here, went on to become “M” in the first two decades of James Bond. As time goes on, Carol Reed’s movies as a director do not hold up as well as Orson Welles’ do, but in this one instance everything collided to perhaps make a movie that coalesced was better than anything Welles ever did.
Endlessly rewatchable, whether the central mystery or waiting on Harry Lime to appear in the shadows after all that talk, or to watch the final long scene where Anna passes Holly and then lingers on the not sop typical happy ending, but It must be said a very honest one. Graham Greene fought for his downer of an ending just like Polanski did in Chinatown 25 years later, just like the best movies that hold up often do. The most intriguing aspect to be is Holly vs Harry – two sides of the same coin. Holly rights stories about people that Harry Lime exemplifies in real life. In a way, Lime is the adventurer and this would make killer material for Holly’s new novel, but perhaps the pain is too real. Holly’s choice – to betray his friend, is the most frustrating and soul searching aspect of this amazing movie. On one hand we in the audience thinks it is easy to say no, Harry Lime is in the wrong and a band man. But is it as easy to say yes, I will turn in my friend?