The Third Man

Review of The Third Man, 1949 film noir directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene, and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles and Trevor Howard. Set in post-World War II Allied-occupied Vienna. Film Score, The Harry Lime Theme.

As war looms it is worth revisiting this cold war film noir classic with its spies, assassinations, and political repression. The author, Graham Greene, was a famous Catholic who worked for the secret service. The main character in the third man, Harry Lime, was based on Kim Philby the upper class English defector. Greene knew Philby, and some say he was the inspiration for the film. Philby, like the other defectors from Cambridge, were all communists. Their spying was ideological, not like Greene’s Harry Lime character at all who was an crook smuggler and murderer. Apparently, on one reading of the film, Greene was warning Philby that he knew he was a spy before he defected. Greene was an SIS agent spying for England in World War II in Sierra Leone in the early 1940’s and on winters spent from 1951 to 1954 in Saigon reporting on the French colonial war for The Sunday Times and Le Figaro. He was apparently inspired to write The Quiet American in October 1951 while driving back to Saigon from the Bentre province. He was accompanied by an American aid worker who lectured him about finding a “third force in Vietnam”. Greene correctly predicted the outcome of the American war in Vietnam.

In his review of the film, The Third Man, Bernie Dowling, author of Noir Dirt Cheap writes:

*Anna Schmidt played by the impressive Alida Valli*

On 50 raids over 12 months from March 1944, allied bombers devastated the ancient city of Vienna, steeped in centuries of European high culture. In 1948, British director Carol Reed and his crew arrived in Vienna to film U.S. and European actors to make The Third Man. Reed’s opening scenes of devastated Vienna added to the grotesquery by filming buildings and the wall behind Joseph Cotten, at askew angles. On release of the movie, Reed said American director William Wyler (noir Detective Story, 1951) sent him a spirit level, with a note, “The next time you make a picture . . .”

In The Third Man, (Joseph) Cotten plays Holly Martins, a broke writer of pulp Westerns, who thinks former college buddy, Harry Lime, has been foully murdered. He will unmask the killer and win the hand of the fair maiden, Lime’s ex. He refuses to believe Lime was a black marketer peddling stolen penicillin and costing many lives, including those of children.

*A scene from the post-war ruins of Vienna from ‘The Third Man’*

In 1948, Europe was trying to pick up the pieces from the wasteland of another world war. One face of the human tragedy in The Third Man is the weary-eyed Anna Schmidt (impressive Alida Valli) living a lie under a false name and a lowly income. Anna Schmidt cannot escape from her love of Harry Lime (Orson Welles) though she learns he has done abominable deeds, even betraying her to the Russians. Their leader is played by Alexis Chesnakov, a composer as well as an actor, in an uncredited role as Col. Brodsky. World War II was barely over when former allies America/ Britain and the Soviet Union were engaged in a new Cold War in Vienna. Lime’s former college buddy Holly Martins, too, refuses to relinquish his benign image of Harry. The reality of post-war Europe, unable to find peace, is beyond Holly’s dull wits. Admired over the generations, stirring images abound in The Third Man.

Even a little boy looks sinister. Dialogue stays in the memory – words about the cuckoo clock, the insignificance of people, a third man who did not give evidence.

In the magnificent final scene, Anna Schmidt emerges from Lime’s shadow to show agency, at last. Holly Martins waits at the end of a long forest pathway for Anna Schmidt. Suspense builds as she walks pensively down the path. Director Carol Reed had to fight for the truthful ending. Reed fought producer David O. Selznick and script writer Graham Greene for that finish. Luckily, the director prevailed. Greene later conceded that Reed got it right.