Movie Review – The Third Man

The Third Man (1949)
Written by Graham Greene
Directed by Carol Reed

The film noir was an international hit. In our last review, we saw how Akira Kurosawa interpreted the genre in Japan. This time around, we look at a British application of noir. After watching this movie, I had a question: are Cold War/spy films a subgenre of film noir? There is undoubtedly some shared DNA. Look at a book/film like John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, which has all the tropes of a film noir, most importantly, a doomed protagonist who faces the consequences of his past actions despite trying to do better. Over time, the spy novel/movie became its own thing, but it was born out of the noir.

Writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives in Vienna after receiving a letter from his childhood friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) offering him a job. However, Martins learns upon landing that Lime was killed crossing the street. Lime’s funeral is full of suspicious-looking people or members of the local law who are very interested in Martins’ sudden arrival in the city. One of the deceased’s friends, Kurtz, tells Martins that Lime informed him about the man’s pending visit and says he was instructed to help him. Martins also meets Anna, Lime’s girlfriend, who joins the writer in growing more & more suspects as the stories around Lime’s death contradict each other. The more he investigates, the deeper Martins sinks into Vienna’s seedy post-war back alleys and sewers, and the truth of Lime’s death becomes much more complicated.

The Third Man is one of those films you’ve probably seen the title of if you are a cinephile, but you may have never seen it. It is a near-perfect film, a cinematic experience ahead of its time both in the maturity of the story and, more importantly, the technique on display. Orson Welles’ inclusion is clearly a nod to the influence the filmmaker had already at this point. Director Carol Reed employs many boundary-pushing cinematographic techniques that Welles was one of the most prominent purveyors of. The choice of where to place the camera is truly inspired in so many scenes, with Reed avoiding the obvious and choosing to use Dutch angles or spending a lot of time ensuring the lighting completely transforms a moment.

The Third Man is also one of the rare instances of the source material’s author perfectly adapting their own work. From all accounts, Graham Greene got along wonderfully with the director and cast, resulting in a film that feels incredibly smooth for as convoluted as its plot becomes. Things get complicated on par with something like the Mission: Impossible movies, but each piece of crucial information is delivered in a way that refrains from raw exposition but doesn’t make itself so obscure you need an explanation after watching the film. The Third Man is also a feat in defying the studio’s will to make a movie better.

Fox’s David O. Selznick wanted the film to be more Americanized and was especially against the idea of shooting on location in Vienna. Why wouldn’t a studio set work fine enough? Well, you will not capture the atmosphere and texture of an old-world European city or the rubble still waiting to be cleared from World War II. Can you imagine the chase through the sewers being set on a sound stage? This film had to be shot on location as Vienna dominates much of the picture. Selznick opposed Welles’ inclusion, which was the wrong idea. You can know with much certainty that he didn’t like the zither-dominant original score by Anton Karas, and the producer was wrong. The music of The Third Man stands out so strongly from its contemporaries and today’s cinema. It layers in another tone of playful mystery, of a character being carried along by the events around him.

One of the suggestions of Selznick was to play up an anti-Soviet angle, which, thankfully, Reed & Graham ignored. It makes more sense to portray the relationship between the British and the Soviets as partners in resolving the aftermath of the war. They work across the hall in separate offices, sharing information when needed. While there is tension because of the Cold War, on a local level, these people have to learn to get along for their work’s sake. To be in conflict, endless suspicion would hinder the progress they were trying to make in restoring the infrastructure of the war-torn regions during their occupation. This doesn’t mean the film traffics in gray morality; it is very black-and-white in portraying good and evil.

The critical act of evil that Martins discovers is black market penicillin being sold in Vienna without the customers’ knowledge that it is tainted. Martins is a naive American who comes into the situation assuming he knows what is happening but quickly understands he is over his head. The crime he uncovers isn’t as intimate as most noirs. Instead, it speaks to a larger social ill. The authorities seized control of Vienna and created circumstances where these carpetbagging peddlers could find a space and exploit the Austrians who needed help to rebuild their society. It won’t be the wealthy who suffer most from the tainted penicillin, but the poorest people most desperate for cheap medication. 

The picture threads the needle of exciting noir and social realist film, never shying away from showing the rubble that covered the city. Yet, you can get lost in the chase. The Third Man is such a strong example of the type of film I wish we saw more from Hollywood: pictures that can entertain without numbing the audience to the conditions of the greater world. The film expands and strengthens the noir vocabulary by using its elements but allowing them to be repurposed in exciting new ways. From its release, critics and audiences both saw The Third Man as an instant classic, and they were right. If this is a gap in your film-watching journey, remedy that ASAP. You will not regret it.