A sort of chocolate-tinged tough-history story for adults, with a buffered
glimpse of fascism and bittersweet romance
Subsections below:
Getting my hands on
what was once a hugely popular film
As lots of us might
date ourselves regarding how we became familiar with The Third Man…
The film aimed to fit
a developed tradition and social good
Certain staples of
noir shape the story, but to its continuing interest today
Reed worked brutally
hard, probably a sine qua non to the film’s achievement
A set of character
actors adds essential flavor
With the Syrian-and-other-country refugee crisis in Europe
right now, it’s said in news reports that it’s the biggest refugee phenomenon
in Europe since World War II. But there are some key differences; most notably,
in the 1940s, in the era of what was called “displaced persons,” part of the
problem was the heartbreak posed by the extreme war that had taken place in the European lands as to result in people’s
being refugees there, which isn’t the case now, with the refugees coming from
outside Europe, from relatively distant foreign countries (and from
more-different cultures from Europe today than existed between European ones in
the 1940s). So the film at hand both may seem a bit relevant as to mood, and
not so…
Getting my hands on
what was once a hugely popular film
It was a little strange having a bit of trouble getting hold
of a definitive DVD of this film, considering that, as a DVD commenter for The
Criterion Collection version of it says in some way, it was “the Sound of Music of its day [the early
1950s]”—meaning, immensely popular. (If this isn’t said on the DVD, Orson
Welles says it in the Leaming biography, to be referenced below, on p. 363. But
the analogy isn’t a stretch.)
While I got up to my neck in working on a review of Mr. Arkadin—which may have made more
than a few of my readers say, “Why bother about this one?”—I’ve seen enough
references within the orbit of that film to The Third Man (1949) that I ended up
looking at it. (And actually, my subhead for one entry on Mr. Arkadin, including “…postulates a dark personage behind
machinations in mottled postwar Europe,” seems to fit The Third Man better—but that’s because Arkadin, by Welles’ very conscious intention, assumed the set of
recent-history-and-thriller premises that Third
Man was built on—which may be why that film struck such a chord that it
became popular worldwide, and now has an iconic status similar to that of Casablanca [1942].)
And after trying to get The
Third Man in a not-long-ago prepared Criterion Collection edition—which I
thought should have a lot of tasty extras—I was given, by the New York State
library network I devotedly get DVDs from, a single-disc, Korean-market DVD
(everything—soundtrack, and most words on the cover—was in English, except a
few bits on the cover), which had no extras. I watched it about one and a half
times, then (per the due date) I had to bring it back. Then I got and viewed
the Criterion Collection version, which has two discs that include extras. Hence,
when I talk about what’s on the DVD hereafter, I mean the Criterion version,
which also includes a booklet.
(The extras include two docs—one 90-minute piece in English [first
shown at Cannes in 2005] that explains the making of the film, which is very
interesting if you’re into that sort of thing; the other doc, about 30 minutes,
is an Austrian-made, German-language thing from some years ago—with English
subtitles—that looks at the film in part for how it meshed with Austrian
cultural/PR interests in ~1949, and how aspects of the film look today. It’s
basically respectful of the film, and somewhat quaint in its European way.)
##
This film is classified as noir (to judge from its Wikipedia
article, anyway), but it deviates from the formula, most notably in that it
really doesn’t have a femme fatale or
some other way that the protagonist is a dupe who gets roped into a horrible,
domino-effect downfall situation by a simple (if “tragic-flaw-type”) mistaken
choice. In some ways, it seems like a western with some fairly clear
delineation between the good guys and bad guys (and its main hero, Holly
Martins, is a writer of pulp western novels), though the overall atmosphere and
story-“fact” conditions are the tattered state in which things are
(infrastructure, social and economic conditions) in Europe post-WW II, and the
moral ambiguity of some local Austrians who are allied with a character (Harry
Lime) who turns out to be a more dastardly number than either his former best
friend in America (Holly) or his European love in Austria had known.
British novelist Graham Greene,
who was long a respected man of letters but who might arguably be said to have
occupied a niche between popular-type books and good literature (he authored,
among other things, what some have said to be his best work, The Power and the Glory, and the Vietnam-related novel The Quiet American). His Wikipedia article points out the extent to
which he was a Catholic novelist, especially in his more serious work, while he
wasn’t above doing more popularly oriented thrillers at times. He developed the
start of the Third Man story of this
film (he first floated it to the film producer Alexander Korda, who was Hungarian-born and Britain-based, and
who was key to this film). The story was then shaped—in a movie-development way
that seems rather modern—by the input of American producer David O. Selznick and British director/producer Carol Reed. In the film titles, Reed is listed as director
and producer, while Selznick’s and Korda’s developmental roles aren’t specified.
Greene, over the years, also worked with Reed on the films The Fallen Idol (1948), writing the
screenplay based on his story (which, to my ignorant look at Maltin’s guide, seems
similar to Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt
[1943]), and on the later satire Our Man in Havana (1960), with Greene
adapting his novel to the screen. Thus, for The
Third Man, he was good for writing a screenplay that could conform with
adult concerns of doubt or guilt, malfeasance in the world, and romantic
relationships compromised by same (and it turns out, from one DVD extra, that
the character of Harry Lime, who adulterated penicillin in his black-market
work—to the detriment of patients—was based on a real person in Austria who did
the same thing).
In a way, The Third
Man, which seems like very smartly made semi-pulp, not only is unsurprising
for being adapted by Greene to a novella after the film was made, but this
history allows us to see how Orson Welles took the approach a step further, to
making a Harry Lime–like story like Mr.
Arkadin (1955-56, ’62), which, all that film’s flaws aside, pushed the
trope of the European black marketer (and the mysteries he spurred) further
toward pulp. It’s ironic to consider how this genre approach suited audiences
in the 1950s, who were dealing with the recovery from the trauma of the war,
while in much more recent years, genre work making it to the big screen much
more often aims for sci-fi and fantasy tropes than the likes of addressing the
dark figures or historical phenomena that made a mess of things mid-20th-century.
By the way, the British version of the film—which has Carol
Reed doing spoken narration at the start, rather than actor Joseph Cotten, who did
the preface narration in the American version—is the only one available on DVD today.
The American version, under the hand of producer Selznick, had some bits cut
and some story elements that added darkness/ambiguity to the mix washed away.
But clearly the genuine version of this story is the pre-Selznick British
version.
As lots of us might
date ourselves regarding how we became familiar with The Third Man…
I’ve seen The Third
Man before, a few times (the first time may have been on Turner Classic
Movies). I admit it took me years to get acquainted with it, then come to
really like it. Its excellence is brought into relief after I’ve (unexpectedly)
done graduate-school-type work on Mr.
Arkadin, which (as to certain story premises and aimed-for style) you can’t
really understand (and, also, as to why
it was made) unless you understand the basics of The Third Man (End note 1).
And I am pleased to say that I am won over to The Third Man the more I view it, which I don’t think I can say
about Casablanca
Another preliminary note to make about The Third Man is that its theme music, played on the zither on the
film by Anton Karas, was so popular (and
that for well over a decade; it sold some 40 million records, according to a
bit on the DVD), that a version called “The Third Man Theme” was covered by the
pop group Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass on one of their 1960s albums—and as
you know, Alpert and his band did Mexican-styled, trumpet-featuring pop. So
while the Karas music was famously played on a zither, Herb Alpert’s group did
it with acoustic guitar (among other instruments, including maybe mandolins),
which isn’t a stretch in terms of adaptation, because the zither looks,
surprisingly, half like a guitar neck and half like a small harp, the two
joined almost like a bizarre “mashup.” The instrument is laid on a table, and
played with two hands—one hand (for right-handed people, the left hand) playing the rhythm/bass on
the harp-like strings, and the other (the right hand) on the guitar neck
playing the melody. (This is why someone can play “The Third Man Theme” on the
piano—the playing on a mechanical level is fairly similar.)
My family had several of Herb Alpert’s albums in the 1960s,
and we had them, to listen to, at least into the 1970s; for a spell, that music
was more familiar to me, during our little 1960-70s lives, than The Beatles’
was. (I only started gluttonously getting into Beatles music in 1976, when I
was 14 going on 15, and since then, they’ve been my favorite pop/rock band,
cultural dinosaur that I am.) And when I hear the zither music on this film, I
am reminded more of the Alpert version, in a way (i.e., I “interpret it for
myself” in that style)…or maybe I should say, when I think of this music in my
head (it sticks in there like the most infectious hook-laden pop), I think of
it being “Hispanic,” or like mariachi music like the type Alpert specialized in.
Yet I’m sure the people who snapped it up in the 1950s saw it as
“Mitteleuropean”—central-European folk stuff that, really, is what it was.
This is one way of saying that The Third Man is an example of how the best pop art bridges—with
our enjoying something in a sort of “shared sensibility”—not only different
subgroups, but across decades or even longer. Another measure of this is that
one character actor in the film, Hedwig Bleibtreu (there’s a Germanic name for you)—who plays the landlady in Anna’s apartment
house complaining in German about the way the police invade buildings like hers—was
born in apparently 1868; she is noted on the DVD by perhaps Carol Reed as
having been 82 when the film was made. That means (similar to Rosemary’s Baby [1968] being a film
still enjoyed today, though two of its stars were born before 1900) The Third Man features an Austrian
actress who was born just a few years after the guns of the U.S. Civil War had
cooled. That’s bridging the centuries for you.
The film aimed to fit
a developed tradition and social good
In many ways, The
Third Man seems about as iconic in its trend-following and trend-setting
style, as does Casablanca and its
like: it’s like an old standard that may seem charmingly “right in every way”
to some, and respectable enough but maybe strikingly trite to others.
Apparently there were rumors or suggestions in past years that Orson Welles had
a hand in directing it (though Carol Reed basically has his remaining
reputation based on The Third Man
more than on the numerous others films he did over decades [End note 2]). (Welles says in an
interview [done in the late ’70s, it seems] that is sampled on the Third Man DVD, that—as seems the
truth—he didn’t help Reed direct his ferris-wheel scene, but the speech he
gives in the ferris-wheel gondola, he basically wrote himself. [End note 3])
The striking visual style
There is the standard noir-type photography, fine use of
black-and-white that got cinematographer Australian-born Robert Krasker an Oscar. (The film as a whole also won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for film year
1949.) Vienna ,
both intact and in war-ruined aspects, is so much key to how this film looks,
especially at night, that it is considered by some to be another notable
character in the film. Most strikingly, the film uses a slanted approach to
many of the shots, which some have thought Welles originated. (Actually, Welles
didn’t make a trademark use of this sort of slanting until his Mr. Arkadin, which of course he made to
capitalize on what, by the early 1950s, had become a Harry Lime franchise.)
The probable truth about the visual look is that Reed and
his executive associates (perhaps Krasker and also producer Korda [?]) wanted
the film to fit squarely (at least visually) with the noir tradition that had
developed in the U.S.
in the 1940s. Actually, to hear it from the 90-minute making-of piece on the
DVD (as well as another, 30-minute, German-language Austrian piece), the film
was made in a very earnest, workmanlike way to serve some noble ends: to foment
some goodwill among different European nationalities in the wake of the war. In
the process, this project was the first British film to include location work
in a foreign country (and ended up becoming regarded possibly the greatest
British film ever made).
The Austrian linchpin
To get help from Austria, there was key support coming from
a film executive in Austria, Karl Hartl, who ran Sascha Films and who was the
only (or among the only) such executives in Austria who was cleared of damning
collaboration with the Nazis (both the U.S. and the Soviets signed off on him,
in presumably the last years that the U.S. and the Soviets were still operating
as allies). Hartl’s studios would provide some facility support for Reed’s
film, which was officially being made by London Films, headed by producer
Korda. (End note 4)
Also in the mix was the British government, which partly
financed the film. Of course, as a historical matter, Vienna ,
similarly to Berlin , was occupied by the four
Allied powers in 1948—Britain ,
France , the U.S. , and the
U.S.S.R. Some formal activities of this somewhat cumbersome alliance are
glimpsed duly (and early) in the film, giving it a newsreel effect.
The slightly illusory Welles angle
Today, this film’s interest seems often to be partly couched
in terms of it being associated with Orson Welles, which is a little unfair, as
Welles was not majorly responsible for its success in 1949 or later. But in
terms of people’s thumbnail ways of classifying it—aside from the fact that
Welles’ role as Harry Lime was a smallish but important component—Welles’
qualities as an artist manage to dog this film. But Peter Bogdanovich, who
probably due to the Welles connection turns up in an intro piece on this DVD,
comments that while Welles obviously didn’t have any directing role here, the
look of The Third Man wouldn’t have
existed were it not for Welles’ Citizen
Kane (1941), The Stranger (1946),
and The Lady from Shanghai (1948).
Bogdanovich also considers this film—and this could well not be hyperbole—as one of the best, if
not the best, non-auteur films ever
made (which is partly to say that it almost has an “auteur-made” quality about
it). Of course, other practitioners of the noir genre (with that genre’s
staples like venetian blinds shaping the way light looks in a room, etc.) were
turning out trend-setting work, like Billy Wilder (with Double Indemnity [1944]). (Welles, by the way, in agreeing to
appear in this film—and engaging in some brinksmanship to up his fee—did this
to raise money for his next film project in Europe, Othello [Barbara Leaming, Orson
Welles: A Biography (Viking, 1985), p. 362; some details are also on the DVD].)
The American angle extended to stars
In view of all this, you could say that, on the esthetic
level, Reed with this film was merely fitting squarely, and in workmanlike way,
with a well-established genre of the time. Further, there was an intent to
craft it in as much of an American-looking way as possible, including in who
starred in it (this while key to its starting was input from an American
producer, David O. Selznick). Selznick would help fund the project; but, as a
historian named Charles Drazin says in the DVD package, by May 1948, a deal was
struck whereby London Films (headed by Korda) and Reed would make the film,
while Selznick would extend some production money, along with some American stars
(he especially wanted Joseph Cotten for the Holly Martins role and Alida Valli
for the Anna Schmidt role)—in return for
distribution rights in the U.S. Selznick, of course, ended up editing the
American version of the film his own way for release in the U.S. with its more
innocent-minded audience.
##
Thus what in some formative phase was the film’s being a
British goodwill gesture to make a life-affirming-enough story, with a
relatively small “production scope,” and the story shaped by dire conditions in
Europe (with crucial production aid from an Austrian filmmaker), and with the
whole thing meant to put noir features onto a fairly workmanlike
production—became a creative process more conducive to an American major
release, which would furthermore be a worldwide hit. This combination of
somewhat mismatched factors may be why Bogdanovich calls the film, in the best
light, a “happy accident.” And more than one DVD commenter notes in some
fashion that the resulting film seems a bigger work than what Reed would later
do, in a more intended ostentatious production, that would actually be less
successful, such as the award-winning Oliver!
In the formative stages, Selznick apparently wasn’t keen on
Welles being in the Harry Lime role (he felt Welles would hurt the box-office
prospects), but Reed was in favor of Welles, and Reed won the day on this. (Interestingly,
both Greene and Reed would remark years later on Selznick being an
“overbearing” and “philistine” film mogul, according to an essay by Drazin in
the DVD-package booklet. But Selznick also contributed to the story development
in a way that shapes how we remember the film, including in how it doesn’t have
a happy ending: Greene’s original idea was to have Anna and Holly be a couple
at the end, which is not what happens in the finished film.)
Certain staples of
noir shape the story, but to its continuing interest today
In some ways (though these are limited ways, as I’ve
suggested), the film seems so standard a type of noir that it might induce yawns
in the more jaded. Anna Schmidt (Valli) is the newly melancholy former lover of
Harry Lime, who at first isn’t aware of how dastardly a racketeer Harry was.
Her fealty to Harry is such that when she learns of his crimes, she still
harbors an attachment to him. (Valli is an Italian-style surname—it was
actually the actress’s stage name; she was born at least partly of Austrian
stock, and even by today’s standards, in this film, looks quite attractive,
rather like an aunt of today’s Jennifer Lawrence [End note 5].)
Holly Martins (Cotten) is the former friend-in-youth of
Harry from America ,
and in his American earnestness he tries to find out the truth about Harry, as
the newly delivered story that he was killed by a traffic accident starts to
unravel fairly quickly. Thus both Holly and Anna have an idealistic sort of
attachment to the absent Harry (while they develop a mild attachment to each
other) that gives them an impulsion to do something more to preserve Harry’s
interests, so to speak, amid the postwar-occupied semi-ruins of magnificent
Vienna, and while various Viennese whom Holly meets are multiple-agenda about
Harry (Harry is still alive, for one reason), in ways that leave us in suspense
about how the story will unfold.
The staple of a sort of love triangle, and a mystery amid
excellent black-and-white shots of an old-Europe city, probing one’s way along
through night and doubt/un-full-knowledge—all may seem almost too-trite yet
still makes it worth watching—almost like a best example of what Hitchcock,
Welles (when more straightforward), and others could do at their best: a story
that might seem shallow in some ways but is emotionally rich and
suspense-making in others.
This goes along with how the film moves along rather
quickly, with every shot seemingly storyboarded to move the story along at each
step: shots often convey an emotionally rich and/or intriguing development, making
The Third Man seemingly one of the
best-constructed films of its era. If you’re seeing it for the first time, you
may be confused by it at times; but see it a second or third time, and you may
be quite pleased how so much is telescoped into shots in an efficient yet
tasteful manner. By the film’s end, you may feel it was longer than it is.
Reed worked brutally
hard, probably a sine qua non to the film’s achievement
Reed may not have been a conscious artist; he seems to have
impressed people with being a warm-hearted sort, and various shots and other
hints suggest he was a solid example of British good sense and competence. But
the materials he had for this film—a tight story well-made by Greene, good
actors who could articulate their impressive characters well (even the Viennese
character actors are memorable), photography that is well executed (e.g., with
water sprayed on cobblestone streets making for fine shots)—all combined, in a
well-edited mix, to make for a film that still attracts us today, more than 60
years after it was made.
Reed also seems to have done a sort of 1970s-style crazyman
thing in directing: due to the fact that (with production starting in Vienna in
October 1948) the coming winter meant he had to speed up getting finished
footage, he had three crews (or “units”; each with its own photography
director, though Krasker was in charge during the night street scenes) for what
was more or less three “shifts” of work (day, evening, and “graveyard shift”).
So Reed took benzedrine (a new drug at the time) in order to be awake and
present for all shifts of production, which in Vienna went on until roughly late December.
(He was lucky he didn’t make himself sick with this.)
Further production work (presumably with Reed operating more
moderately health-wise) was done at Shepperton Studios in England , in
early 1949 (in which period Welles was more exclusively employed for a time),
with film editing starting in April. (By the end of May, after Reed had played
some samples of his zither tunes during rough assemblages he watched on
Wednesdays during the Shepperton phase of production, Anton Karas was brought
to London to more deliberately perform music to accompany the film; he couldn’t
read or write sheet music, so he performed and apparently “created music on the
spot” while watching the film on a movieola.)
Reed’s use of benzedrine seems to have been not quite as bad
as what producer Selznick reportedly routinely did in his life, which (from
what I could gather from remarks in a DVD extra by who I think is his nephew)
he took for six days a week, only catching up on sleep (for 20-odd hours) on
Sundays. He also was a chain-smoker (and routinely had women taking dictation
in various situations); this apparently contributed to his seeming overbearing
to the likes of Greene and Reed. Selznick was half-manic with his
drug-influenced, “Type A” way of living his life. (A remark is made on the DVD,
which accords with others, that Selznick was an interfering kind of producer,
while Alexander Korda would step in to offer input just when it was needed.)
A set of character
actors adds essential flavor
Actors in this film depict vivid characters that are types
without being too corny:
* Trevor Howard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Howard)
as Major Calloway, the locally assigned Brit in command of Holly’s situation—quick
with dry or wry comments, but not cold-hearted;
* Bernard Lee (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lee)
as Sergeant Paine, something of a “good cop” to Calloway, more simpatico—and he’s
read Holly’s books, so he speaks to him as a fan;
* Wilfrid Hyde-White (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfrid_Hyde-White)
as British Council representative Crabbin—a sort of focus of comedy; he lines
up Holly to, at a thoroughly unexpected time, give a public-educational lecture,
which saves his hide at a crucial juncture (otherwise Crabbin is a bit of a
clown, and Greene is said on the DVD to have always depicted such British
Council types in his work in a negative light, having had an experience with
one that was not terribly unlike Holly’s);
* Erich Ponto (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Ponto)
as Dr. Winkel—a Germanic type (the actor is ethnic German) and, as an ally of
Harry Lime’s, he’s somewhat ambiguous, but not a coldhearted “ve haff vays of makingk you tdalk” kind
of Germanic type;
* Ernst Deutsch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Deutsch),
an Austrian, as Baron Kurtz, another ally of Lime’s and somewhat similar in the
ambiguity department to Dr. Winkel, but an amalgam of, in appearance, a sort of
“Euro-creep” and an unctuously appealing sort; with his little pet dog he seems
both exotic and ambiguous as to trustworthiness;
* Siegried Breuer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Breuer)
as Popescu, said to be a Romanian and another ally of Lime’s;
* Paul Horbiger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_H%C3%B6rbiger)
as Karl, the porter; Horbiger was a favorite actor in Austria at the time, it
seems, and he cuts an interesting figure in his limited but colorful role here
(and he had to utter his English lines without being able to speak English
fluently, it is said on the DVD);
* Hedwig Bleibtreu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedwig_Bleibtreu)—discussed
near the start of this entry;
* Herbert Halbik (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0354752/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t32)
as the little kid with the ball, who later mistakenly, innocently, suggests
Holly was involved in the murder of Karl the porter. This kid is both cute and
annoying; nicely, the actor about 55 years later is shown on the 2005 90-minute
doc, at the time in a wheelchair but giving a bemused comment related to the
film. As a middle-aged man he has basically the same round head as the little
kid, though otherwise you wouldn’t recognize him.
##
End note 1. There is something amusing that happened in
about 1953, among the interesting “backstory” bits noted in Barbara Leaming’s
bio of Orson Welles (Viking, 1985, pp. 390-91): when Welles lined up actor
Robert Arden to have the lead role in his Mr.
Arkadin, he extricated Arden from the
stage role he had at the time (in a version of Guys and Dolls done in Britain) with seemingly-too-unlikely, but
readily-coming help from Carol Reed. Reed contacted Arden with the news that he
was now available for Welles after Welles had told Arden—in a phone call in a
break in the middle of Arden’s performing in the show—that his, Welles’,
“London representative” would be in touch with him. Arden
inferred that Welles must have requested of Reed that he get Arden freed from the stage show for Welles,
which Reed was then able to do.
End note 2. Reed
also directed Odd Man Out (1947),
which gets mentioned along with The
Fallen Idol as among his early successes. He also, 20 years later, directed
the musical Oliver! (1968), a take on
the Dickens novel Oliver Twist (the
film had the popular song “Consider Yourself”); and his stepdaughter Tracy Reed
plays the only female—a secretary to General Buck Turgidson, indoor-sunbathing—depicted
in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove
(1964). There’s your trivia fix for the day.
End note 3.
Welles’ speech includes the remarks ending with his saying (in whatever
specific words) that, in the history of Italy, the Borgias did all their
violence but ended up with the country’s producing Michelangelo, etc., while
Switzerland, for all its peace and democracy, produced all of the cuckoo clock.
In this way, Welles summed up the fascism that was definitive of what the
character of Harry Lime had turned into; this was the only material in The Third Man not written by Greene, and
this is the verbiage people most remember of the film today. (Also, this theme
seems to foreshadow a thematic point that Welles would do more floridly,
arguably more powerfully, and not always successfully, in Mr. Arkadin.)
End note 4. It
was Hartl, throwing a party for the film’s executives, who furnished a zither
player, Anton Karas, whose music so appealed to the party that he ended up
doing the film’s soundtrack, to his enormous record-selling success—and to our
still having the music in our heads almost 70 years later.
