Alternative Oscars - 'The Third Man' (1949)

Seeing one of your favourite movies of all-time re-released on the big screen is among the rarest of pleasures and so it proved when I was lucky enough to see a 4k restoration of Carol Reed and Graham Greene's 'The Third Man' recently. 

                           

My giving writer and director equal credit is deliberate: this was very much a collaboration, and the brilliance of the film is as much due to the wonderful characters and eminently quotable dialogue as the haunting visuals. Greene was asked to write a film for Carol Reed but, as he explained in the preface to the book, found it "impossible to write a film play without first writing a story." Having said that there are many differences between the two and Greene concedes the film is better than the story, partly because it is "the finished state of the story ."

                 

Graham Green (left) and Carol Reed

I would go as far as to say 'The Third Man' may be the greatest British movie ever made. Fans of 'Brief Encounter' might have a strong case for an argument, as would proponents of Powell & Pressburger's finest moments or perhaps the best output of Ealing Studios. But not much else compares.

This bold claim got me thinking about the criteria that determines the "nationality" of a film. The location of the production company is probably the boring answer. John Kobal's 'Top 100 movies' remains an essential reference book for me, but I remember being confused that the highest ranked British film therein (# 18) was Kubrick's '2001 A Space Odyssey.' An MGM film, directed by a Jewish American starring two American actors ?! Despite its English director and writer, 'The Third Man' features two Hollywood stars (Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten), an Italian lead actress (Alida Valli) and is a film loosely about post-war Vienna's division into British, American, Russian and French zones. In many ways then, an international film. 

Of course, there's much more to 'The Third Man' than that mere summary of its historical setting. It's that rare instance where every aspect of the film is in perfect synchronicity - the casting, the performances, the writing, the visuals and, of course, Anton Karas' remarkable musical score. 

Without giving too much away, the story essentially concerns a novelist, Holly Martens, arriving in Vienna to meet an old friend, Harry Lime, only to find that Lime died a few days earlier in a traffic accident. Martens suspects foul play and begins his own investigations, aided by Lime's girlfriend, Anna Schmidt, much to the consternation of the British Army Police (memorable turns from Trevor Howard and Bernard Lee). 

Visually it is a stunning movie, recalling German Expressionism and Welles' own 'Citizen Kane' in the camera's unusual angles. Vienna itself is perfectly utilised - its dark cobbled streets, its sewers and a run-down amusement park. Filmed in black and white, and shot at night but with strong lighting, it is full of contrasts. Moreover, the visual contrast of light and dark mirrors the moral ambivalence of the character at the heart of the film, Harry Lime.

It may well be Welles' best acting performance. Brief, but full of moments of brilliance; Lime is a shadowy figure, smirking and winking at the camera before disappearing - a metaphor for Welles' own career as a film-maker perhaps?

                                  

It is a film that contains some of my favorite moments in movie history.  Such as, Lime's self-justifying speech, famously improvised by Welles: "It's not so bad. You know what the fellow said, in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, murder and bloodshed but produced Michelangelo, Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years they had democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly." And of course,  the ferris wheel scene...

                                  

Greene and Reed disagreed over the ending of the movie. The writer was of the view that "an entertainment of this kind was too light an affair to carry the weight of an unhappy ending", before conceding that Reed was "triumphantly right" in his downbeat finale.  The final scene, Anna's almost interminable approach towards Martens, is glorious and brave beyond measure.  It is intended to recall the opening of the movie but I was reminded also of Lean's 'Lawrence of Arabia', specifically the introduction of  the recently deceased Omar Sharif's Sherif Ali - another film that justifiably could lay claim to be Britain's best, and another movie star taken too soon.