The Third Man

I had to do a double-check of this movie's directorial credentials as I watched it, and again afterwards, and again just before writing this. It says Carol Reed. He went on to win an Oscar for best directing for Oliver. And yet, if you watch this with no knowledge of who directed it, but having seen enough Orson Welles films to know his style, you'd swear in open court this was a Welles movie. So much of this movie's DNA contains Wellesian flourish that he had either already shown or would continue to evolve after this, and yet ... Carol Reed's name is in the directorial credit spot. Let's start with the story. Holly Martins, an American author, visits post-WW2 Vienna to see his friend, Harry Lime, who has offered him a job. But when Holly arrives, Harry is dead. The police seem glad Lime is dead, as they think him a criminal of some repute, and don't intend to investigate, so Martins asks around. What he finds is a potential conspiracy; different witnesses give different versions of Lime's death, he may or may not have committed some heinous crimes, and there may or may not have been a third man at the scene of Lime's death. On the surface, it's a blend of standard noir elements and a Hitchcockian "man in the wrong place at the wrong time" movie. But those Wellesian-but-not-Welles touches give it that extra oomph. The conflicting testimony about Lime's death is so at odds, and yet all of it credible, it creates a feeling of paranoia and confusion in the viewer. Who is telling the truth? Is ANYBODY telling the truth? The viewer and Martins are aligned in being absolutely befuddled. What of Lime's lover, who is in Vienna on forged papers? Is she trustworthy? Why does the British Major Calloway not want to investigate? At the center of this Martins, who is absolutely, positively NOT the dashing, clever, grizzled man you see as the protagonist in noir movies. Martins is a writer of low-brow westerns; he's a kind of a drunk, and he's somewhat easily manipulated. He never has his own "a-ha!" moment; every revelation and every discovery he has is either given to him outright, or he stumbles into ass-backwards. And he's not smart enough to connect the dots all on his own. And then there's Harry Lime and his supposed crimes. I say supposed because, while **SPOILERS** it turns out Lime fakes his death (in a way the movie wisely refuses to make clear), it never actually shows the evidence of the crimes he's accused of. Sure, he goes on the run, and he has a charmingly sociopathic conversation with Martins in their one meeting, but we never see the evidence. The viewer, just like Martins, is told he is guilty of crimes, but unlike Martins, we are not shown the evidence by the police. And Major Calloway has been so cold and indifferent and, frankly, untrustworthy, its hard to believe this evidence isn't tainted or misconstrued somehow. And since Martins is far from the sharpest spoon in the drawer, his belief of the evidence isn't evidence at all for the viewer. Could be he's a sucker getting taken for a ride by a crooked cop. The Third Man posits a world where nobody is completely trustworthy, least of all the movie itself, which is as Wellesian as it gets. Now I gotta discuss cinematography. I hate Dutch angles. You hate Dutch angles. God hates Dutch angles. When this movie came out, it got such backlash for the use of them (an uncommon filmmaking technique then), a friend of Reed's sent him a level with a note saying "next time you make a movie, put this on top of your camera, please". And yet, they work here. They actually add to the movie. Martins' growing paranoia and confusion are represented by the Dutch angles. This is a world off-kilter, both because of the conspiracy and Vienna itself (more on that in a bit). But it's so much more than Dutch angles that make this visually arresting. Again, there's so many Wellesian camera shots and use of lighting and shadow at play here that I cannot describe adequately that add to the sense of discomfort in the viewer. The camera is rarely where you think it should be, but always in the place where it needs to be. There's even little tricks like the use of montage in a key scene that, instead of relaying a mass of information in a short period of time, obfuscates that information, giving the viewer even more reason to doubt, well, everything. And then there's the setting, Vienna, Austria, almost a character in and of itself. Post-war, Vienna was occupied by the Allied nations, dividing it into quadrants and policing it as the country struggled to pull itself out of from the aftermath of the war. Bombed out buildings and rubble are seen frequently in the movie (it was shot on location), and overall, there's a sense of exhaustion and a loss of identity. Vienna is occupied, after all; its own Austrian heritage is being suppressed by armed forces from four countries, all politely butting heads, in the name of keeping the peace. In a way, it mirrors the story itself; Martins views his own success as an author as phony, as his books are nothing more than pulp westerns; the friend he has known for decades may or may not be a ruthless international criminal; Lime's lover, Anna, literally lies about her nationality. Deceit and lack of identity are part and parcel of everybody and everywhere in The Third Man. What faults the movie has is not enough to give me any caution in recommending it, but they are worth mentioning. The story can be a tad muddled at times. It does not have the Wellesian precision in storytelling. Likewise, the score is ... something. It is almost exclusively a whimsical Spanish guitar; while it is well composed, I can't think of a single scene where it fits, and not in an intentionally discomfiting way. As I said, though, that is not even remotely grounds not to recommend. This pulled me in and never let go. It is every bit as confounding and compelling as The Stranger or The Lady From Shanghai. I know it says Carol Reed everywhere, and there's even a picture of him on Wikipedia ... but books written under pseudonyms sometimes used fake author pictures (see Stephen King's "Richard Bachman" books). It would be the most Wellesian thing of all to invent another human being whole cloth to take the credit.