The Third Man, at 75

Since it turns 75 this year, I decided to take the opportunity write on a movie that I dearly love and that may just be the greatest ever: Carol Reed’s utterly singular The Third Man. It routinely appears high on the Sight and Sound lists chronicling the best films ever made and was voted the best British film ever by the British Film Institute in 1999. If that type of acclaim, its age, and its black and white photography would ordinarily put you off, let me be the first to reassure you that watching this film is no homework. It is wryly funny, playful, and features twists and suspense that have not aged a day. Any of its more dated elements live on as if preserved in a time capsule.

The premise of the film is the ultimate hook:

Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime.

From the get-go, what a phenomenal choice to set your mystery/thriller in – post-war Vienna in 1949! So, you see this plot description when you open this movie on your streamer of choice, you notice the blessedly brief runtime of 1 hr. 45 mins and decide to give it a whirl. You’re immediately greeted by a remarkably casual voiceover that feels sometimes improvised setting the scene: post-war Vienna is a closed city divided by four powers, and there’s a black market for everything. The blending of the playful tone in the narrator’s voice overlaid with images of destruction, military occupation, and criminal activity – the duality and contrast of this tone is punctuated when the narrator casually mentions how “these situations often tempt amateurs…” and we see a corpse floating in the river with the city visible in the background. The blending of low and high societies in that image is yet another blending of ideas and tone, not to contrast, but to suggest that they are inextricably linked in this world. Accepting these juxtapositions is key to embracing this film’s complex yet singular tonality. It shouldn’t work, and yet it does; we feel like we should laugh, but we can’t quite manage it. Thematically, this isn’t a movie of “this here AND that over there”, but rather “this AND that, all at once.” Diving deeper means going beyond just reading the setup for this movie and its unique delivery of exposition into some serious spoilers, so if you haven’t seen this gem please do so first.

Ok, you’ve seen the movie (or just want to keep reading) – time to talk about it. I’ll recap the plot, picking up where we left off since understanding the basics is crucial to appreciating it:

As Holly (Joseph Cotten) investigates Harry’s mysterious death, he quickly realizes the facts of the case don’t add up. Against the wishes of Major Calloway (Trevor Howard), he meets with Harry’s former associates as well as Anna (Valli), Harry’s lovestruck girlfriend. Together they remember him and potentially flirt with each other, but Anna is under investigation for a forged passport as she seeks to avoid Soviet repatriation. Harry (Orson Welles) reappears, still willing to bring Holly in on his racket, which he learns from Calloway is stealing and diluting penicillin to re-sell it, leading to dozens of fatalities. Holly confronts Harry aboard a Ferris wheel, decides to betray him with Calloway’s promise of aiding Anna. She learns of this, so he decides to leave, but Calloway re-convinces him by showing him Harry’s victims. He helps set a trap, leading to a chase through the sewers Harry had been using to accomplish his schemes, ending in Harry’s death at Holly’s hands. At the (second) funeral for Harry, Holly waits for Anna only for her to walk past him without saying a word.

When people who study this sort of thing cite this film’s influence, they’re quick to point out the expressionistic cinematography featuring canted camera angles and exaggerated lighting. The Dutch angle was most notably used in German expressionist horror films to evoke madness or disorientation that the characters were experiencing. In this film, the first instance of it is when Holly enters Harry’s apartment building only to learn he’s just too late for Harry’s funeral, and the film continues to use this technique throughout in every other shot. It is most exaggerated and effective when Holly learns something that upends his understandings; my favorite use of it is nearly invisible and occurs when Holly and Harry confront each other in a carriage of a Ferris wheel. In every other instance the Dutch angle appears in the film, the camera doesn’t rotate further but will occasionally push in or out so that the angle doesn’t change. In this scene, however, the camera leans side-to-side as the hanging carriage would, so that the horizon itself is what tilts – when paired with the heatedness of the confrontation and the depths of moral ambiguity, the result is profound. The absolute highlight: when Harry looks at the people hundreds of feet below them and asks, “Would you really feel pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? What if I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped moving?” If you’re looking for a representation of this film’s influence, I’d direct you to The Dark Knight, when the Joker is dangling upside-down after capture: the camera rotates so that he appears right-side up with the world appearing upside-down in a way that reflects his worldview. Here, similarly, the world seems a small step away from tumbling out of balance as Holly learns the depths of his friend’s evil but is still unable to betray him.

The expressionistic lighting casts long shadows across nearly every wall in the film, literally creating a visual analogy for the underworld Holly quickly becomes submerged in. Those same German expressionistic films would feature similarly heightened shadows to create nightmarish imagery – shadows don’t look like that in real life, and the idea that a large shadow is pursuing you is the stuff of nightmares. Evoking these films also evokes the literal part of the world where they were made, and the idea of a lingering German influence literally haunting the bombed-out Vienna of this story is a powerful one. The cinematography (combination of lights, camerawork, and camera movement) is integral to the telling of this story that spans the genres of noir, romance, drama, spy thriller, and even comedy. Also shooting it like a ghost story expresses the idea that this world has become haunted and corrupted as it attempts to claw itself out of WWII’s shadow, and that there’s an evil in the atmosphere – perhaps it lingers just below the streets, in Harry’s sewer lair.

The other key technical element here is Anton Karas’ one-of-a-kind score played on the zither, which could undo the darkness of the plot and cinematography yet somehow manages to semi-ironically elevate it while also delivering levity. 75 years on, the score remains unique and so still creates the intended effect to signal to the audience that they, just like Holly, are in an unfamiliar world that doesn’t quite make sense. The music also helps the film achieve thematic duality and the mixed feelings that I was writing about earlier. The main theme is very playful, as is most of the score, which elevates the film’s comedic moments but somehow makes everything more agonizing. Harry’s crime is appalling, and the film treats it seriously. But that theme, combined with Orson Welles’ charming performance, makes him impossible to totally condemn. On the other hand, the sly mischief that he carries himself with and that the score evokes becomes sinister after we learn the extent of his crime late in the film. When his associates get together to kill the porter that had been helping Holly, the zither which previously underscored laughs now creates menace, but the laugh still hangs in the air, the joke now bad. This same zither makes Holly and Anna’s budding near-romance sweet, swooning, yet immediately wrapped in tragedy. There’s not another film score that could use essentially one instrument to create such a range of feelings, and often several at once that should conflict but somehow combine.

This is also, flat out, a perfectly told story. Like Chinatown, the mystery at the heart of the story is stretched out so perfectly – without any obnoxious early hints – that re-watching is as pleasurable as the first watch. Even when you know the terrible secret at the heart of Harry’s mysterious disappearance, Holly’s drunken and bumbling investigation featuring a revolving door of eccentric characters in the first hour is entertaining enough to keep you involved. Writer Graham Greene and director Carol Reed spice up their mystery with enough humor to convince you that you’re just watching a comedy, though the final 30 minutes will convince you otherwise. Thematically, this text is as rich as they come. I’ve done a little bit of discussing already about the themes of ghosts being evoked by the cinematography, but the camerawork is to emphasize the fact that this is a story where a man re-appears after being presumed dead. Further, this movie is prophetically critical about America’s place in the world following WWII. Yes, the Soviets are the secondary antagonists here, and their efforts to repatriate Anna add a layer of Cold War emotional complexity into the story, but the primary antagonist of the movie (once we learn everything) is one of the only two Americans present! Harry Lime is, despite his outward charm, a hardened killer who’s out to extract money from this recovering society in as callous a way as he needs to, and it’s the innocents who pay the price as collateral damage. Even Holly spends the entire story as an interloper stumbling around a place he does not understand and gets an innocent man (the porter) killed when he pushes the investigation everyone is urging him to drop.

The cast is uniformly excellent, with Orson Welles stealing the show as one of the most charming and complex villains in cinema history. We might forget he’s in the movie until he is revealed in one of the best instances of this in cinema history. Then, he and Holly have one of the most powerful “hero/villain face-to-face” in cinema history, with the metatext that Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles debuted onscreen together in Citizen Kane to kick off the decade. After Holly decides to betray him to the exquisitely snarky Trevor Howard, he’s exhaustingly pursued in one of the most perfectly constructed foot-chase scenes in cinema history. Anna’s unwavering devotion to his memory, and unwillingness to turn on him (even though he sold her out to the Russians for their protection) is among the most heartbreaking in cinema history. And, to recap, this is one of the best-paced mysteries in cinema history happening in one of the most timely and evocative locations in cinema history, that’s shot in one of the most influential ways in cinema history and scored in one of the most singularly unique ways in cinema history that sticks the landing tonally, thematically, and entertainingly in a way that so few movies in cinema history have. And the ending shot, of Anna coldly walking past an awaiting Holly while the leaves sprinkle down is one of the best in cinema history.

Best movie ever? You be the judge, but it’s got a case.