The Third Man

Genre is a funny thing. One the one hand, it’s a fixed set of rules that writers, producers, and directors follow to make a movie. On the other hand, those rules often change as societal attitudes change. As a result, we are treated to a multitude of classic movies that just keeps on growing. The thriller genre is a particular one of interest for me. It’s a genre that works as a bridge between drama and horror and, as such, its movies are shaped by the building blocks of each. One can easily argue that thrillers these days have become a tad convoluted: made confusing by elaborate stories and plotline rules that become to numerous to retain. But when you go back and watch, say, The Big Sleep (1946), you realise it’s not all that different from modern movies like Inception or Se7en. However, there was a time when simple things such as the setting, the script, and the camera angles had just as much, if not more, power than the complexities of the modern thriller script. Take Carol Reed’s The Third Man for example. 

The film tells the story of a broke American pulp Western writer (Joseph Cotton) who comes to a post-war Vienna with the promise of a job from an old boyhood friend. However, he arrives to discover that his friend Harry Lime has been killed in a car accident. Curiosity causes him to probe into the death and when a few witness accounts don’t add up, he begins to suspect foul play. The further he probes, the more questions come to light about Harry Lime: what was the racket he was involved in, is his lover really that clueless about his friends, and who was the mysterious third man who helped move his body? 

The screenplay is by Graham Greene and it’s a masterstroke from start to finish. Taking the familiar tropes of American noir movies and putting them in a post-war European setting not only provides a haunting and horrific visual setting, but also brings a lot of complexity to the movie. Shot on location in Vienna, which has been quartered into districts between four military powers, the film depicts a real post-war horror show. Buildings are half-standing, there is rubble and fragments of architectural civilisation everywhere, and the entire place is plagued with black market racketeers. It provides a truly sad and haunted backdrop that beautifully contradicts and takes away some of the romanticism of the American noir story it’s telling. 

And then complexity is brought into the game simply by the fact that a large portion of the script is in German. The language barrier works wonders in creating a very large serving of mystery and plot misdirection, but at the same time the events of the film are easy to follow because of the genre rules that it adheres to. It just goes to show that genre is the same in any language. 

On a more visual front, this movie is absolutely stunning. Each camera angle is memorable whether it’s depicting shadows on the wall, dying fingers grasping through a manhole, or a headlight illuminating the face of the villain. Indeed the majority of the film’s power comes from its flawless camera shots that don’t necessarily show a lot, but express a whole heap. Add into the mix the wonderful performances from Cotton, Alida Valli, and of course Welles who’s improvised monologue about the cuckoo clock makes for a very interesting scene, and The Third Man is a picture of cinematic brilliance that manages to do an awful lot when you really consider all that’s going on underneath it. The film has a wonderful grasp on, not only genre but cultural genre and how it means different things in different settings, as well as literary devices that make it rich, bold, and truly classic. 

Starring: Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard, Paul Horbiger, Ernst Deutsch, Erich Ponto, Siegfried Breuer, Hedwig Bleibtreu, Bernard Lee, and Wilfrid Hyde-White 

Year: 1949 

Rating: PG