The Third Man
Jun. 27th, 2007 09:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThe Third Man: or, the film every noir thriller since has wanted to be when it grew up. With rare success. Okay, so maybe I'm exaggarating just a liiiiitttle, but all the same, it's my favourite, over anything with Humphrey Bogart in it, no matter whether he's playing Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade, and anything sans Bogart but based on Chandler, and such neo noirs as L.A. Confidential, dearly as I love them. The Third Man remains untouched. Somewhere in the documentary on the dvd I bought in England, someone says it's in a way the anti-Casablanca, with Casablanca capturing the optimistic wartime spirit and despite the bittersweet ending of the lovestory going out on an upbeat note, whereas The Third Man is all post-war cynicism, with no more easy villainy in the form of the Nazis to unite against and boo-hiss at. There is something to that, and if you like, you can trace it to the origins: Casablanca, despite its many European contributors, is a quintessential American film, whereas The Third Man, despite one American co-producer (David O. Selznick) and two American actors, is quintessentially European, from its authentic 1948 Vienna location through its wonderful script by Graham Greene to its English director (Carol Reed). And the music, of course. A very late addendum, and yet the film is completely unthinkable without it: instead of the usual symphonic score movies of the period offered, you have Zither music throughout, composed and played by Anton Karas, and one can't think of any other music that would set the ironic, witty and deeply unsentimental tone so well. (Mind you, it's an earworm. If you heard Harry Lime's Theme once, you'll find yourself whistling it for days.)
I've watched this film numerous times, and each time there is something new to discover: on this particular reviewing, it struck me that the two funeral services at the beginning and the end include the credo of the Catholic church, which means Harry is a Catholic. Of course he is. As George Orwell put it, if you read Graham Greene, you get the impression hell is a very exclusive Catholics-only night club. Also, watching this movie - where all the Austrians are actually played by Austrians and talk German that makes sense with Austrian accents, as opposed to more recent efforts where what's supposed to be German is nearly always some garbled stuff sounding unintentionally hilarious to native speakers - makes me realize that while this is a great film in any case, being fluent in both languages adds another kick, because the German rants by the porter or Anna's landlady, which never get translated, just summarized for the bewildered Holly, are really very funny. (Given that they hired the cream of Austrian/German acting for the supporting roles, I suspect Reed gave them just a summary of what their characters were supposed to say as well and told them to improvise, which they did with great gusto.)
These are all side aspects, though, and ones you don't notice when first watching. What makes this noir tale of American Holly Martins coming to Vienna and discovering his friend Harry Lime, who was supposed to have a job for him, died under odd circumstances so compelling are so many other things: there is Joseph Cotten, who can do likeable and bemused as few actors could, as Holly; there's Alida Valli being as beautiful as ever a film noir lady was as Anna, Harry's girlfriend, whom Holly falls for; Trevor Howard as the sardonic Captain Calloway, who in a direct contrast to the cliché is the professional cop with far more insight than our amateur detective, Holly; the aforementioned cream of the German-speaking theatre - Paul Hörbiger, Erich Ponto, Ernst Deutsch, Siegfried Breuer and Hedwig Bleibtreu as various shady and not so shady Viennese; and, in a cameo arguably more famous than any of his feature-length roles in any other film not directed by him, Orson Welles as Harry Lime. Welles was as always in need of cash to finance his own movies, in this case Othello which he had started to shoot, and The Third Man was one job among several to make said cash; casting him had come as a direct result of casting Joseph Cotten as Holly. (The original casting ideas, back when Harry and Rollo Martin were English, were Noel Coward and Cary Grant. Pause to consider that one.) Cotten and Welles, both as real life friends and because of Cotten starring in various Welles movies, just went naturally together, and their rapport is instantly believable.
Then there's the cinematography. Actually, that one was a double-edged sword for Carol Reed, because Reed went for expressionistic angles, which of course is what Welles did quite a lot in his own films, and that together with the casting of Welles caused the legend of him co-directing, which is complete nonsense (and was always denied by the man himself, rightly so). The Third Man is one of those films that should never ever be remade, not just because it's completely redundant but because colour would be ever so wrong; the black and white imagery using the ruined Vienna where the rubble from bombs is still lying around, the shadows on the walls and in the sewers for the climactic chase scene, all this is pure cinema, at its best. There are a few top contenders for most famous individual shot - the fingers coming out of the sewer, the long shot of Alida Valli as Anna walking by Holly, never stopping (in direct opposition to the script where there was a happy ending for her and Holly, but Carol Reed let her walk on, and saw instantly this was the right ending) - but I must go with the general agreement and pick the revelation of Harry, because it really brings all the elements of greatness in this film together. The staging, of course; Holly on the one side of the road sees someone is standing in the shades on the other, with Anna's cat - whom attentive viewers might recall was said to only have liked the dead Harry - snuggling at his feet - and yells at this person to show himself; and still we don't see anything but the shoes, much as Holly does; then an irritated neighbour opens her window, light comes through and shows the man standing there. Who is played by Orson Welles in the only role he didn't use any make-up for; even as young Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane, he had a false nose and various other ingredients because he wanted young Kane to look dashing and was pretty sure he himself did not ("I have the face of a depraved baby"). He's dressed in black, and given all we and Holly learned about the supposedly dead Harry up to this point, there is no question that he's a villain, up to no good, in short, the heavy. Except... when the light hits him, and a disbelieving Holly stares at him, Harry looks back and gives him a rueful smile.
That smile; Harry Lime is so very much a Graham Greene creation, morally rotten to the core (no rogue with a heart of gold he; in case we missed the point, Greene gives us Calloway hammering it down by showing Holly the victims of Harry's diluted penicillin trade; the porter who gets murdered so Harry's secret remains kept is very likeable and harmless, and his indifference to the fate of Anna stands in direct juxtaposition to her passionate loyalty towards him), but with an easy charm that makes him compelling and makes us understand what Holly and Anna see in him. And you need someone like Welles - who knew how to use and exploit charm if he had to - to pull that off in minimal screentime. The other Welles contribution, aside from acting, is the one bit of the script Graham Greene didn't write, the ending of the ferris wheel scene, summing up Harry's cheerful amorality in phrases endlessly requoted because they're so damm quotable:
"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly!"
So long, Holly, indeed. It's an ongoing matter of dispute whether or not Harry Lime was influenced by Graham Greene's friendship with Kim Philby (whose real first name was Harold; Kim was a nickname). One of Greene's biographers, Norman Sherry, thought suspecting Philby was the reason why Greene resigned from MI6: "Perhaps Greene, always intuitive, resigned because he suspected that Philby was a Russian penetration agent. … If Greene did suspect Philby, it would be just the kind of thing that would catapult him out of the service rather than share his suspicions with the authorities." Collaborating with the authorities to bring a friend to justice or helping that friend is the dilemma Holly Martins faces, and he chooses the side of justice, which you'd think is The Right Thing To Do, given that Harry really is a criminal of the worst sort (see above); but this is a film noir, and written by Graham Greene, so things refuse to be that simple. When Holly finally does face Harry with a gun, Harry is already wounded and in the process of getting captured, and after a long exchange of looks, he gives Holly a nod, and only then does Holly shoot. (The original script made this even more explicit, letting Holly tell Calloway later he shot Harry "because I couldn't bear seeing him in so much pain", i.e. at that last moment, he does not act as an agent of justice but out of personal loyalty.) In the documentary on the dvd, there is some talk about the "love triangle" in the sense of Holly being in love with Harry's girlfriend, i.e. two men competing for a woman, but in the actual film, not only is there no competition - ("if you do get Anna out of this mess, be kind to her, she's worth it," says Harry in between Machiavellian speeches to Holly in an offhand way, and Anna tells poor Holly she wouldn't even be able to remember what he looked like if she had to describe him at one point in the movie) - but you get the sense that the triangle runs quite another way. "I loved him, you loved him," says Anna re: Harry to Holly when they still think he's dead, and presumably that line today wouldn't be in the script or would be there in a far more conscious way, but whether Greene intended it or not, Anna and Holly both come across as being in love with Harry.
(Sidenote: it's never quite clear what Harry actually expected Holly to do for him in Vienna when originally inviting him to come, or how he expectes Holly to contribute to black marketing when later making the offer to cut him in, or indeed why he risks meeting Holly in what he had to know was almost certainly a trap; does Holly give you the impression of being remotely capable of doing something useful in the criminal field? Which leaves us to conclude it must have been whatever fondness Harry the callous was capable of feeling for the old boy.)
Lastly, Greene really must have hated doing readings and lectures for English councils abroad, because the way he satirizes them is viciously funny and amusingly vicious. Holly being a writer (of Westerns) also makes for some nice meta; he keeps seeing himself in one type of story - the hero, avenging his dead friend - while being a completely different one (the noir guy, finding out things about his friend he really didn't want to know; also the Innocent American Abroad, with all his good intentions leading to hell, which is a Greene subgenre of its own). One has to say, though, that the satire, several decades later, still works, and independent of nationality; if you've ever been to a certain type of lecture, you'll recognize what the scene sends up instantly.
I've watched this film numerous times, and each time there is something new to discover: on this particular reviewing, it struck me that the two funeral services at the beginning and the end include the credo of the Catholic church, which means Harry is a Catholic. Of course he is. As George Orwell put it, if you read Graham Greene, you get the impression hell is a very exclusive Catholics-only night club. Also, watching this movie - where all the Austrians are actually played by Austrians and talk German that makes sense with Austrian accents, as opposed to more recent efforts where what's supposed to be German is nearly always some garbled stuff sounding unintentionally hilarious to native speakers - makes me realize that while this is a great film in any case, being fluent in both languages adds another kick, because the German rants by the porter or Anna's landlady, which never get translated, just summarized for the bewildered Holly, are really very funny. (Given that they hired the cream of Austrian/German acting for the supporting roles, I suspect Reed gave them just a summary of what their characters were supposed to say as well and told them to improvise, which they did with great gusto.)
These are all side aspects, though, and ones you don't notice when first watching. What makes this noir tale of American Holly Martins coming to Vienna and discovering his friend Harry Lime, who was supposed to have a job for him, died under odd circumstances so compelling are so many other things: there is Joseph Cotten, who can do likeable and bemused as few actors could, as Holly; there's Alida Valli being as beautiful as ever a film noir lady was as Anna, Harry's girlfriend, whom Holly falls for; Trevor Howard as the sardonic Captain Calloway, who in a direct contrast to the cliché is the professional cop with far more insight than our amateur detective, Holly; the aforementioned cream of the German-speaking theatre - Paul Hörbiger, Erich Ponto, Ernst Deutsch, Siegfried Breuer and Hedwig Bleibtreu as various shady and not so shady Viennese; and, in a cameo arguably more famous than any of his feature-length roles in any other film not directed by him, Orson Welles as Harry Lime. Welles was as always in need of cash to finance his own movies, in this case Othello which he had started to shoot, and The Third Man was one job among several to make said cash; casting him had come as a direct result of casting Joseph Cotten as Holly. (The original casting ideas, back when Harry and Rollo Martin were English, were Noel Coward and Cary Grant. Pause to consider that one.) Cotten and Welles, both as real life friends and because of Cotten starring in various Welles movies, just went naturally together, and their rapport is instantly believable.
Then there's the cinematography. Actually, that one was a double-edged sword for Carol Reed, because Reed went for expressionistic angles, which of course is what Welles did quite a lot in his own films, and that together with the casting of Welles caused the legend of him co-directing, which is complete nonsense (and was always denied by the man himself, rightly so). The Third Man is one of those films that should never ever be remade, not just because it's completely redundant but because colour would be ever so wrong; the black and white imagery using the ruined Vienna where the rubble from bombs is still lying around, the shadows on the walls and in the sewers for the climactic chase scene, all this is pure cinema, at its best. There are a few top contenders for most famous individual shot - the fingers coming out of the sewer, the long shot of Alida Valli as Anna walking by Holly, never stopping (in direct opposition to the script where there was a happy ending for her and Holly, but Carol Reed let her walk on, and saw instantly this was the right ending) - but I must go with the general agreement and pick the revelation of Harry, because it really brings all the elements of greatness in this film together. The staging, of course; Holly on the one side of the road sees someone is standing in the shades on the other, with Anna's cat - whom attentive viewers might recall was said to only have liked the dead Harry - snuggling at his feet - and yells at this person to show himself; and still we don't see anything but the shoes, much as Holly does; then an irritated neighbour opens her window, light comes through and shows the man standing there. Who is played by Orson Welles in the only role he didn't use any make-up for; even as young Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane, he had a false nose and various other ingredients because he wanted young Kane to look dashing and was pretty sure he himself did not ("I have the face of a depraved baby"). He's dressed in black, and given all we and Holly learned about the supposedly dead Harry up to this point, there is no question that he's a villain, up to no good, in short, the heavy. Except... when the light hits him, and a disbelieving Holly stares at him, Harry looks back and gives him a rueful smile.
That smile; Harry Lime is so very much a Graham Greene creation, morally rotten to the core (no rogue with a heart of gold he; in case we missed the point, Greene gives us Calloway hammering it down by showing Holly the victims of Harry's diluted penicillin trade; the porter who gets murdered so Harry's secret remains kept is very likeable and harmless, and his indifference to the fate of Anna stands in direct juxtaposition to her passionate loyalty towards him), but with an easy charm that makes him compelling and makes us understand what Holly and Anna see in him. And you need someone like Welles - who knew how to use and exploit charm if he had to - to pull that off in minimal screentime. The other Welles contribution, aside from acting, is the one bit of the script Graham Greene didn't write, the ending of the ferris wheel scene, summing up Harry's cheerful amorality in phrases endlessly requoted because they're so damm quotable:
"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly!"
So long, Holly, indeed. It's an ongoing matter of dispute whether or not Harry Lime was influenced by Graham Greene's friendship with Kim Philby (whose real first name was Harold; Kim was a nickname). One of Greene's biographers, Norman Sherry, thought suspecting Philby was the reason why Greene resigned from MI6: "Perhaps Greene, always intuitive, resigned because he suspected that Philby was a Russian penetration agent. … If Greene did suspect Philby, it would be just the kind of thing that would catapult him out of the service rather than share his suspicions with the authorities." Collaborating with the authorities to bring a friend to justice or helping that friend is the dilemma Holly Martins faces, and he chooses the side of justice, which you'd think is The Right Thing To Do, given that Harry really is a criminal of the worst sort (see above); but this is a film noir, and written by Graham Greene, so things refuse to be that simple. When Holly finally does face Harry with a gun, Harry is already wounded and in the process of getting captured, and after a long exchange of looks, he gives Holly a nod, and only then does Holly shoot. (The original script made this even more explicit, letting Holly tell Calloway later he shot Harry "because I couldn't bear seeing him in so much pain", i.e. at that last moment, he does not act as an agent of justice but out of personal loyalty.) In the documentary on the dvd, there is some talk about the "love triangle" in the sense of Holly being in love with Harry's girlfriend, i.e. two men competing for a woman, but in the actual film, not only is there no competition - ("if you do get Anna out of this mess, be kind to her, she's worth it," says Harry in between Machiavellian speeches to Holly in an offhand way, and Anna tells poor Holly she wouldn't even be able to remember what he looked like if she had to describe him at one point in the movie) - but you get the sense that the triangle runs quite another way. "I loved him, you loved him," says Anna re: Harry to Holly when they still think he's dead, and presumably that line today wouldn't be in the script or would be there in a far more conscious way, but whether Greene intended it or not, Anna and Holly both come across as being in love with Harry.
(Sidenote: it's never quite clear what Harry actually expected Holly to do for him in Vienna when originally inviting him to come, or how he expectes Holly to contribute to black marketing when later making the offer to cut him in, or indeed why he risks meeting Holly in what he had to know was almost certainly a trap; does Holly give you the impression of being remotely capable of doing something useful in the criminal field? Which leaves us to conclude it must have been whatever fondness Harry the callous was capable of feeling for the old boy.)
Lastly, Greene really must have hated doing readings and lectures for English councils abroad, because the way he satirizes them is viciously funny and amusingly vicious. Holly being a writer (of Westerns) also makes for some nice meta; he keeps seeing himself in one type of story - the hero, avenging his dead friend - while being a completely different one (the noir guy, finding out things about his friend he really didn't want to know; also the Innocent American Abroad, with all his good intentions leading to hell, which is a Greene subgenre of its own). One has to say, though, that the satire, several decades later, still works, and independent of nationality; if you've ever been to a certain type of lecture, you'll recognize what the scene sends up instantly.
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Date: 2007-08-15 01:25 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-08-15 04:46 pm (UTC)What's funny is that my husband's not a big film fan; he's become more educated about it as time goes on because of my interest, but he can take most films or leave them. Turns out he saw The Third Man in college and loved it. I've put the soundtrack and Criterion Collection DVD on the Xmas list for him.
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Date: 2007-08-15 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-08-15 04:16 pm (UTC)I suppose I'm the only person in the world who considers the famous first appearance of Harry to be an anticlimax. All that buildup - the camera goes into the dark doorway, it pans up and.... it's pudgy Orson!
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