Stolen Directly from IMDB.com
Director
Carol Reed
Writing
Graham Greene (story)
Alexander Korda (story) uncredited
Graham Greene (screenplay)
Carol Reed uncredited
Orson Welles uncredited
Cast
Joseph Cotten .... Holly Martins
Alida Valli .... Anna Schmidt (as Valli)
Orson Welles .... Harry Lime
Trevor Howard .... Major Calloway
Bernard Lee .... Sergeant Paine
Paul Hörbiger .... Porter (as Paul Hoerbiger)
Ernst Deutsch .... 'Baron' Kurtz
Siegfried Breuer .... Popescu
Erich Ponto .... Dr. Winkel
Wilfrid Hyde-White.... Crabbin
Not stolen from anywhere yet not quite original
Plot:
The Third Man is a whodunit film noir. The basic plot is that down trodden pulp fiction novel writer Holly Martins comes to Vienna to make his fortune writing for his long time friend Harry Lime. Upon arriving, however, Holly learns of Harry’s tragic death and also learns that Harry was wanted by the police for a racketeering scam. In disbelief, Holly takes it upon himself to unravel the mystery surrounding Harry’s death and this terrible error by the police. Mislead and threatened by Harry’s Viennese friends Baron Kurtz, Dr. Winkel, and Mr. Popescu, discouraged by the police and by Harry’s former lover Anna, Holly steers himself through a blindfolded investigation of his friend. Along the way, he falls in love with Anna and is heartbroken by the truth surrounding Harry. As a result of this Holly makes a profound and illogical attempt to win Anna’s heart by helping close the case on Harry’s activities and death.
Original Film Analysis
At first glance The Third Man (1949) does not seem like it is film noir. Carol Reed, director, and Graham Greene used a slightly different angle to portray their protagonist, Holly Martins that doesn’t quite fit noir as well as it should. The film is undoubtedly noir, however. The aesthetic look of the camera and the positioning of lights and shadows are clearly identified as noir. And when applied to a noir world view, many aspects of the plot emerge that define The Third Man as a classic film noir.
Holly Martins is brought into Vienna by his friend Harry Lime, to whose house Holly travels. Upbeat zither music plays as Holly climbs the staircase, giving the audience a sense of comfort, but moments before Holly rings Harry’s doorbell the music stops, and the audience is thrown out of their comfortable feeling by the sharp contrast of Holly’s shadows and his juxtaposed position in relation to the porter, whom engages in conversation with Holly. Our normal view of Holly is instantly and forcibly switched to a very high angle shot looking down on Holly as he looks up and converses with the porter. There is heavy key lighting coming in from Holly’s right casting a shadow twice his size onto the stairs. To contrast the two men, the camera looks down on Martins and looks up at the Porter, and the lighting effects are also contrasted, Martins has hard light coming from the fill lights on the right, and the Porter has soft light coming from below and above, so that he has no shadows. From our camera angle looking down at Holly nearly the entire frame is taken up by twists of the staircase and Holly’s shadow, causing our view of Holly to be insignificant when compared to his shadow and even more insignificant when compared to the twisting staircase. The fact that this shot is placed outside Harry’s home is symbolic to the importance of Holly in Harry’s grand scheme, but at that same moment we learn that Harry has been “killed at once, instantly, already in hell. Or… in heaven” according to the porter. The porter confuses the locations of heaven and hell, pointing up for hell and down for heaven, leaving the only available analysis to be one of the moral ambiguity implied by the porter’s mistake. The twist of fate just experience by Holly can also be metaphorically applied to the locations of the two men on the stair case. Since it is the beginning of the movie, and due to the age difference of the two men, we can also read into the metaphor that Martins has only just begun to climb the twisted, spiral stairs of fate while the Porter has nearly reached the end at the top of the stairs, illuminated on all sides by super-natural warmth of… “hell.”
Holly learns of how Harry’s death happened from Baron Kurtz, who instills doubt about the police claims that Harry was the worst racketeer that ever made a living in Vienna. As a result the following scene where Holly meets Anna after her performance is filled with Holly having all sorts of doubts about Harry’s death. At the moment Holly gets down to business he is standing at the end of a long row of mirrors and slightly to its side, a portion of his face reflected in the mirror. Anna is sitting in front of the mirrors but the camera is at an angle where she does not have a reflection. The camera position is highly important in this scene. The camera is placed at the level of the desk connected to the mirrors, so that Holly is high above the center of the screen and Anna’s eyes are centered. The camera is also angled with a slight ‘Dutch tilt’ of about a 15 degree rotation of the camera. This tilt makes the figures of Holly, Anna, and the right angles of the mirrors and windows around them seem odd and disorienting to the audience. The interpretation of this shot relies exclusively on that tilt. Holly is confused and seeking answers, his own disorientation causing the tilt of the camera; while the Dutch tilt also lends itself to the interpretation of Anna as an anti-traditional noir Femme Fatale. The information she soon provides Holly with leads him to his own fate but unlike classical noir Femmes, Anna had no ill intentions by telling Holly that information.
The next important sequence is within Dr. Winkel’s den. It is filled with a “collection of collections” which obstruct light and cast odd shadow patterns so that as Dr. Winkel paces the floor of the room he is continuously in half-shadow. As Winkel fabricates more of the story he increasingly denies to answer just as much and paces more. He is simultaneously dominating but submissive within the frame of each shot and within the conversation. That is to say he carefully directs the conversation as much as he is directing how much of the frame he fills. The effect is shown once again through Dutch tilt when Holly is part of the shot, again showing Holly’s helplessness and confusion. The effect of this sequence on the audience is that of curiosity; we know that Winkel is orchestrating the conversation and at this point we are beginning to suspect that Holly’s fate is being orchestrated not by super-natural powers but by the careful crafting by humans.
Holly later talks to the third friend of Harry’s, a Mr. Popescu, and is threatened, but Holly’s naivety causes him to not pick up on it and he continues his investigation. The noir aesthetic of lighting and angles continues to be used more frequently as the scenes of the movie switch from daylight to night time and from well light rooms to dim ones. This aesthetic is naturally reflected in the scene after the porter is murdered and Holly is identified as a possible suspect. Holly goes to his hotel to contact Colloway of the police force and finds a car waiting for him. Without thinking Holly takes the car and the driver immediately races off. As the driver speeds off to the unknown destination we see a fixed camera shot where everything else is moving. The driver is immersed in shadow, signifying complete mystery, except infrequent slivers of key lighting illuminating the left side of his face from the right. The driver completely fills half of the frame while sitting in his darkness, and this is contrasted with Holly’s position in the car. He is in the back seat, behind bars and glass that separates him from the driver. Holly’s face is lit by key lighting coming in from both sides but is most obviously lit from the left. To the audience the car and driver are most obviously a symbolic representation of Holly’s fate in the traditional noir sense; Holly is bouncing around in the back seat as Fate takes him to an unknown destination with unknown consequences regardless of Holly’s desire to go elsewhere. This reflects the audience’s reaction to the plot twist seen just moments ago, when the porter was murdered (and Holly was blamed for no good reason, very noir). The audience now suspects that Harry’s friends are conspiring against Holly and at this point do not know in which direction the plot will twist, much like how Holly does not know in which direction the roads will twist while he is within the car.
After a bit of running around while being chased by Popescu’s men, Holly and the audience both no longer know whom to trust or believe. It is at this point that Holly turns to Calloway, the police officer, and we learn of the facts surrounding Harry’s ‘racketeering.’ Holly gets drunk and pays a final visit to Anna before he is going to fly back home the next morning. The sequence after he leaves Anna’s apartment is one of the most noir moments in the entire film. Holly notices Anna’s cat at the feet of a body immersed in shadow, save the feet. To reflect Holly’s inebriated state, the Dutch tilt is once again used to disorient the audience into a carefully calculated thought process of who could possibly be in the shadow. Holly makes such a ruckus that a woman is startled and turns on her light. The shot is put into Dutch tilt and a face is suddenly illuminated. The audience is meant to be just as surprised as the man we see in the light, whom we instantly recognize as Harry despite having never seen him before, if not by the look on his face then by Holly’s reaction. The significance of this scene is the abruptness of the light; it comes in suddenly and leaves just as suddenly. Harry’s disappearance trick thanks to the sudden darkness and a car leaves Holly in a complete state of shock and confusion, more poetically, it leaves Holly in the dark.
The plot unfolds itself to have Holly work with the police to bring Harry to justice. At first it was Holly’s attempt to win Anna’s heart but she rejects him and Holly does it for Harry’s victims. One of the final sequences takes place in the large labyrinth of the Vienna sewers as Harry runs for his life, trying to escape further and further into the darkness only to attempt several times to metaphorically emerge into the light again. More literally he tries to escape the sewers but at every turn is hindered by police, so that he must escape deeper into the sewer to find safety. In the final scene of the sequence, Harry has been shot, but has managed to crawl up a staircase to its top, only to have his escape to the surface be prevented by the sewer itself via grating; metaphorically speaking, Harry’s escape from darkness was prevented by the darkness itself. It makes no difference however, the camera cuts to the surface, and we see Harry’s fingers poking through to the surface in one of the creepiest and moving shots I've seen. The surface is barren, empty, the wind howls and echoes and the entire scene makes the audience feel cold. This scene is Reed’s commentary on the morality of his film; he’s trying to tell the audience that Harry cannot be saved, there is no ‘light’ at the end of Harry’s journey, unlike how the porter was shrouded in light when he was at the top of his staircase. This is how Holly finds and confronts Harry. Harry is now a broken man, lying atop a staircase in the same metaphorical sense I used to juxtapose Holly and the porter in the opening scene. Harry nods to Holly, and both of them know and accept what must be done.
In the true noir ending, Holly is a broken man. He came to Vienna “happy as a lark” at the prospects of getting a job with his old friend. During the course of his adventures his chances for a job and his friend were both, figuratively speaking, dead, but he had his eyes on a certain girl and fell in love with her. Holly’s dilemma throughout the movie reflects some of the most tantalizing philosophical questions: a job and good friends or a passionate romance? Holly gambles everything he could have on a romance with Anna and in the end comes up empty handed like any noir hero. The final scene of the entire movie is Anna walking straight past Holly, completely indifferent to his existence. The fact that Holly chose this course of action that led to his self destruction is what lingers inside of the audience’s minds as the movie closes with Holly standing alone with nothing left for him but his good looks and the shirt on his back. That is why this film is a film noir.