dir Carol Reed, scrpl Graham Greene, cin Robert Krasker, ed Oswald Hafenrichter
“You know what the fellow said—in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” – Harry Lime (Orson Welles)
The Third Man was filmed mostly on location in a bombed-out, postwar Vienna. And even if the story didn’t work, though it does, the film would be required viewing for Robert Krasker’s cinematography alone.
Filmed in inky blacks and harsh whites, with jarring camera angles, and countless shots of twisted, claustrophobically narrow Viennese streets—replete with wetted cobblestone to better capture the light—the movie is gorgeous. The atmosphere is particularly startling, having spent the better part of a week screening Wes Anderson’s films, with their mannered, almost staid, compositions.
This is not to say that The Third Man is merely a photographer’s film. Rather, the haunting camera work serves the story, a tale of intrigue and murder. Joseph Cotten plays Holly Martins, a pulp novelist, who’s come to Vienna at the request of his old school friend, Harry Lime. When Martins arrives however, he discovers that Lime has been recently murdered, run down in the street.
The official police report, and witnesses to the accident all claim that two men came to Lime’s aid after he was run down. But as Martins begins digging, he finds a man who saw the event unfold from his apartment, who insists that there was another person at the scene—a third man.
It would be unfair to spoil just who that third man is, or all of the other twists that the plot takes, but it’s probably not a surprise to anyone that Lime, played by Orson Welles, eventually makes an appearance. His entrance, accompanied by a fickle cat, is one of cinema’s classic scenes—a master class in shadow and light.
The film’s extended sewer chase is also beautifully staged, particularly a shot of Lime’s fingers reaching up through a grate, to the Viennese street above. Welles refused to film in the actual sewer, so a replica was built on a London soundstage, where his close-ups were filmed. Body doubles were used for many of the long shots filmed on location.
Also notable is the film’s final scene. Director Carol Reed was worried the static, nearly 2-minute shot was too long. It isn‘t. it is a note perfect ending to a near flawless film.
Much has been said of composer Anton Karas’s jaunty, and incongruous, zither score. It gives the film a lightness that it doesn’t necessarily deserve, but that it might just need. Considering the weighty subject, war profiteering from diluted penicillin, the bouncy zither manages to soften Lime’s blasé detachment, making him seem a bit less vile, in spite of the despicable nature of his crimes.
Watching The Third Man again, the music almost feels like an inspiration for Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. David’s character, an exaggerated version of himself, while not as loathsome as Harry Lime, does do some pretty awful things through the course of his TV series. While played as comedy, albeit a black one, David too juxtaposes a bouncy, carefree soundtrack against his character’s darker personality.