| John Costello |
The Third Man plays at the Trylon Cinema from Sunday, May 3, through Tuesday, May 5. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
For all its intrigue, racketeering, grift, occasional death, and rubble, The Third Man (1949) maintains a persistent optimism. Zither music strings us through chase scenes across Vienna’s war-damaged landscapes and down shadowy passages. The movie’s action includes misdirection, sight gags, and emotional reversal for comedic effect. The cinematography awes while conveying almost as much meaning as the intrigue-strewn dialogue. A dog, a cat, and a small boy steal various scenes, progressing the plot.
It’s as if the movie has been infected with the innocence brought to Vienna by American Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten). Holly’s innocence is a contagion the city’s residents cannot resist.
Opposite Holly is Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli), an actress posing as an Austrian. Anna and Holly are connected by the person they both love, American Harry Lime (Orson Welles.) “I was so lonesome until he showed up,” Holly says about meeting Harry when they were schoolboys. To Anna, Harry was someone who never grew up. “The world grew up around him.” Harry’s death unites and divides them.
Why do Holly and Anna love Harry? He’s a charismatic fast talker who knows more about the world than they do and has convinced them to follow his rejection of rules. They are unaware of the injuries and deaths he has caused.
Holly arrives in Vienna broke and desperate. An American writer of cheap Western novels with names like Death at Double H Ranch and The Oklahoma Kid, he’s been flown to Europe by his old friend, Harry, who promised him a job writing for his medical charity.
Holly soon discovers Harry was struck dead by a truck in front of his apartment building. Wandering to the cemetery, he observes Anna at Harry’s funeral and is espied by two of Harry’s associates, as well as Major Calloway (Trevor Howard), a British member of the international military police force in occupied Vienna.
Holly quickly blunders his way through a series of encounters with several people who encourage him to leave Vienna and one who gives him an opportunity to stay. He understands little about Vienna, from the city’s division into four separate zones controlled by the Allied powers to the way Britain, Russia, and the other allies share control of the city center and vie for influence. (The characters refer to Russians, not Soviets or the Soviet Union, which is just as well for post-Soviet viewers.) He doesn’t speak German, furthering his alienation.
Holly’s innocence extends beyond ignorance about language, culture, crime, and politics to immaturity and gullibility. He bristles at accusations Harry was involved in serious crimes and believes he will solve Harry’s murder. When Calloway tells Holly Harry’s criminal activity included murder, Holly decides to prove his friend’s innocence. He compares himself to a cowboy in one of his novels who clears a man wrongly accused.
Later, when Holly describes how Harry stole his girl and abandoned him during a police raid, it becomes clearer how his idolization of Harry clouds his self-awareness and judgment. Holly is naïve.
Surrounding Holly are people who lie, tell him what they think he wants to hear, barter lives, and sell whatever they can get their hands on. Expecting Holly to recognize intimidation, people advise him not to pursue his investigation into Harry’s death. Where Holly expects some kind of order, there is desperation and survival.
“You were born to be murdered,” Calloway says from frustration over Harry’s blunders. Calloway doesn’t need another corpse to investigate.
Holly is right to suspect the circumstances of Harry’s death. Interviewing two of Harry’s acquaintances, Holly is told they carried Harry still alive from the roadway. Karl (Paul Hoerbiger), the porter in Harry’s building, states Harry’s neck was already broken, contradicting them. The two men claim they alone carried the body. “There was a third man,” Karl tells Holly.
Holly is smart enough to notice the inconsistent stories and foolish enough to blab about the third man to everyone he encounters, including people who don’t want the truth discovered.
At first, Anna helps Holly investigate Harry’s death. She believes in the innocence of the man she loved, even though Harry arranged for one of his associates to create false papers for her. These forged papers allow her to live in the international zone. Like Holly, she refuses to believe Harry was involved in more serious crimes.
Born in Czechoslovakia (modern-day Czechia and Slovakia), not Austria, Anna’s immigrant situation is unclear. Her forged papers falsely claim she was born in Austria. If the Russians discover the truth about her papers and her birth in Czechoslovakia, they will “claim her,” as the Russian colonel, Brodsky (Alexis Chesnakov) puts it to Calloway. It’s never said in the film what this “claim” means, whether relocation to Vienna’s Russian-controlled zone, deportation to Czechoslovakia, or disappearance into the Siberian gulag system. Whatever the possible outcome, Anna dreads discovery.
Humor laces through Holly’s blunders, while Anna remains alert to danger from sudden crowds and the international police. Holly manages to remain in Vienna only because one of the British soldiers mentions his novels to Crabbin (Wilfrid Hyde-White), the chortling head of the British Cultural Center, a propaganda operation designed to win Austrian hearts and minds. Crabbin pays for Holly’s hotel room in exchange for Holly’s promise to deliver a lecture at the cultural center.
Eventually, Crabbin reveals the lecture topic, the crisis of faith in the modern novel. When Holly asks what that means, Crabbin says, “I thought you’d know. You’re a writer. Well, of course you do.”
For their part, the Russians show indifference to capturing the black marketeers, some of whom live in the Russian zone. The Russians are more interested in claiming people, like Anna.
There’s an argument to be made that an illegal penicillin ring involving a British military orderly will weaken British influence, destabilize Vienna, and perhaps create circumstances favorable to a Russian-backed takeover. Amid an antibiotics shortage, Calloway prioritizes investigating the penicillin ring over Anna’s fate.
Unlike Holly, Anna is wise from experience and possesses a moral compass rooted in hard-nosed reality. She refuses to be bartered at the expense of others, even if it benefits her. She cannot escape to America.
At one point, Anna tells Holly she only performs comedies, not tragedies. There’s a bitter irony in this moment. Anna is living the tragedies of Harry’s death, her own danger from the Russians, and the tenuousness of a city where protocol is only a word. Anna no longer has Harry to protect her.
When soldiers detain Anna, they wait in her rooms while she stands in shadow changing from her nightclothes into her regular clothes. A British soldier says, “I’m sorry, Miss. We can’t go against protocol.” “I don’t even know what protocol means,” Anna replies.” “Neither do I, Miss,” the soldier says.
Holly’s innocence (ignorance, immaturity, incompetence, lack of self-awareness) upsets machinations in Vienna and drives the tension between him and Anna. The movie’s optimism and humor accrue to Holly and threaten Anna’s exposure.
I suggest Graham Greene, the movie’s writer, is making a pointed comment about Americans venturing abroad when they possess little experience with and less understanding of the wider world. American naïvete, driven by arrogance, is destructive.
From the trailers, you might assume The Third Man is a tragedy about friendship, betrayal, crime, and corruption, and you’d be partly right. The problem the story navigates isn’t mere innocence. It’s the way we cling to idealized notions to protect our love of another, to avoid confronting that person’s flaws and our own. One American tries to avoid confronting the destruction caused by another American, until it’s no longer possible to look away.
The movie’s tragedy arises from what people do out of a belief in their own heroism. The story’s climax arises from what people do when their innocence is shattered. This includes Holly, Anna, and the third man. Greene doesn’t trade in simple heroism, and I won’t spoil the identity of the third man or the movie’s second and third acts. When innocence is lost, some choose friendship, some love, and some justice, or a combination of all three.
Watch closely the expressions of the various characters, from the evasive gazes when Holly confronts black marketeers to the brief nod in the sewer. Some feelings are better expressed with a gesture and are paid in kind.
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon