I love a good mystery film, Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps is my all time favourite
film noir mystery. Up until now that is. Carol Reed’s The Third Man is a masterpiece in executing the perfect murder
mystery story.
Released in 1949 shortly after the Second World War, and
alongside Samson and Delilah, Pinky
and All The Kings Men, it was a
competitive year for film. However, The
Third Man won an Academy Award for best Cinematography and a BAFTA for best
film. Joseph L Mankiewicz scooped the
Academy Award for best Director from Reed for All About Eve.
The opening credits familiarize us with the films theme tune.
A quaint, Italian sounding melody plucked out on the strings of a zither, to which the
credits literally roll over. We are then given a fast paced, narrated opening
few shots explaining the history of Vienna, that Russians, Americans, British
and the French occupied some parts. This
opener reminded me of Jason Reitman’s film Up
In The Air, which employed a similar technique in quickly rallying through
important information to get to the good stuff. It would be no surprise that an
American Director like Reitman would be influenced so heavily by Reed, as the
film is inspiring to any young director watching it at any age.
We are then introduced to our main character, Holly Martins,
an American writer specialising in Westerns. We learn he is looking for a man
called Harry Lime, whom we almost instantaneously discover has recently died by
being hit by a car. At his funeral we
are shown the face of Anna Shmidt, a character we will later discover was
Lime’s lover. Martin’s is unconvinced Lime’s death was as innocent as the
police thought and takes its upon himself to solve the mystery of why he was
murdered. Through talking to various witnesses, friends and the two men who
dragged Lime’s body to the side of the road he discovers there was a mysterious
Third Man at the scene of the crime. Some of his witnesses swear he was there,
and others say there were only two men at the scene. This mystery develops and
upon taking his evidence to the police, another sinister element of the story
is unveiled. Lime was illegally stealing penicillin from the local hospitals
with the help of Doctor Herbiger, watering it down and selling to people in
need of it, helping with the penicillin shortage of the time. However, this act
ended up killing hundreds of innocent people, including children, but Lime’s
carried on with his dark medical work unconcerned for the safety of his users.
Lime was a wanted man, so his death would have seemed like
an act of revenge form someone related to this crime. Case solved right? Not
quite. Reed has another trick up his sleeve. Martins visits Anna at her home
and meets her cat, who, she informs us, only ever liked Harry. The cat jumps
out the window and strolls off into the night. We see it approach at a pair of very smart shoes worn by a smartly dressed man, shrouded in shadow. The
cat starts purring and meowing at this stranger. Harry Lime. He is alive, having replaced his body with
that of Doctor Herbiger and disappearing into the sewers. Cue the films incredible finale, a chase in
the sewers between Lime, Martins and the Police. Completely soundtrack free,
the tensions are created through shadows creeping and racing on the walls. An
intense scene, demonstrating pure film noir style, culminating in Lime’s actual
death.
The final scene of the film is at the funeral of Lime’s,
like the beginning, we see Anna. Martins and Anna developed somewhat of a
relationship while working together, however, Martins traded Anna’s freedom
from the Russian occupied part of Vienna for his knowledge on the whereabouts
of her lover Lime. So he wasn’t exactly in her good books as she walked down a
long tree lined road, dead in the centre of it. Martins is waiting for her at
the end and you think this is it, the happy, Hollywood ending. She’ll walk over
to him, they’ll apologize to each other, kiss, make up and walk off into the
sunset together. Wrong, she walks straight past him.
The Third Man is a
fantastic film, and uses some interesting cinematic techniques in unraveling
its complicated plot. One of which being that Martin’s doesn’t speak German so
doesn’t understand what people are telling him. He relies on various people
around him to translate, so him and we have to trust that what is being said is
the truth as there are no subtitles for us. This adds to the constant guessing
and doubting of the various suspects we meet along the way. As do the jarring camera angles as some scenes
are shot with a heavily tilted camera, unsettling the flow of the film, making
you really pay attention to those scenes. In true Film Noir style, everyone is
a suspect and Reed employs various methods to make us think this, placing
people in odd situations, introducing characters by showing the slicing chicken
with a gigantic knife and linking people together tenuously. I didn’t think Lime would still be alive,
however, the films most famous actor Orson Welles hadn’t been on screen yet, so
I assumed he would be Lime but thought his scenes would be those of a flashback
explaining the story in a Jonathon Creek
kind of way.
Carol Reed and Graham Greene created an amazing world,
complicated by lots of different characters and sub-stories linking into the
main narrative, but they succeed in delivering this narrative in an easy to
follow manner. You know who each person is when you see them, so you don’t
spend the whole time trying to figure out what’s going on, you are guessing and
working out who the third man is, just like Holly Martins. Orson Welles delivers the character of Harry
Limes with enviable ease and charm, making him almost likeable despite his
child killing, penicillin offcut. The moment in the film, which emphasised the
hidden evil lying within Harry Lime, was when he was on the Ferris wheel with
Martins. He pointed to the people below and described them as dots. He asked
Martins if he was offered $20’000 for each dot that just stopped, how many dots
would he feel he could stop. He is insinuating that he got paid a lot of money
for a dose of his illegal, murderous penicillin and instead of stopping when he
found out it was killing people, he tried to see how many more people he could
kill, thus how much more money he could make from it. A darkly scripted scene,
disguised by a friendly Ferris wheel and a sunny day.
As mystery, film noir goes this has to be up there with the
best of them. It is flawless, confident and stunning to watch. The narrative is
carried by its main actors Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles and Alida Valli, each of
which delivered their characters perfectly, allowing us to feel sympathy towards
the right people and suspect others. I
recommend to anyone who enjoys a good mystery film without being pounded by the
Hollywood half naked women, big guns, explosions and cringe-worthy one liners. The Third Man is executed simply with
fine acting, a beautiful script and stunning camerawork. What else should you
need?
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