Wednesday, 18 July 2012

The Third Man (1949)

- Contains Spoilers -

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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