Lack of Taste Film Club: Cathy Young / The Third Man (1949)
The Russian-American journalist talks about one of her all-time favorite movies.
Welcome to Lack of Taste Film Club, where I talk to people about movies. The idea is that in talking about movies, the conversations tend to center towards professional critics and academics responding to them, rather than those who are working outside of the field. In response, I speak with non-cinephiles and their relationship with cinema, through our chosen film.
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Cathy Young is a journalist, whose writings are almost everywhere, from Reason Magazine to Quillette to Arc Digital. Since I am a fan of her writing, I ask her for this installment, what is her most rewatchable film. And that film was Carol Reed’s The Third Man. Cathy and I discuss at length about the unique techniques undertaken in the film, its Cold War backdrop, and how it affects personal loyalty for the worse. This conversation has been edited for clarity.
Lack of Taste: So why did you choose The Third Man?
Cathy Young: It's been one of my favorite films since I first saw it, I don't remember how many years ago! (Long enough that I used to have it on VHS.) I must have seen it at least a dozen times, both on my own and in the course of proselytizing. I think it's a combination of many things -- the atmosphere, the story, the characters and actors, the setting in ruined postwar Vienna (I love the city and have been to Café Mozart quite a few times -- incidentally, they heavily promote their Third Man connection!). The script is brilliant in its blend of drama, suspense, and often bitter humor, and the story explores some fascinating issues about good and evil, personal loyalty versus impersonal duty, and more. Also, that last scene!
Lack of Taste: Let's begin with the first thing you mentioned, which is the atmosphere. Film noir is one of my favorite genres, and The Third Man is typically anxious in its mood, except it points to a new geopolitical era. Set in post-war Vienna, Holly Martins is an American writer who is looking for his friend Harry Lime, suspected of committing many crimes in the area. As Roger Ebert wrote in his "Great Movies" essay, it points to the misplacement of optimism by Holly who overlooked Lime's flaws and slowly learns about it, as soon as further murders were committed for a Soviet conspiracy.
The Dutch angles applied to the film brings a sense of anxiety among the characters. There is one scene featuring a conversation in a bar between Hollys Martin and Sergeant Paine, a fan of his work, that establishes the mood by building up to it. The scene cuts between them and additional characters who contribute to these conversations by adding their dismay of Vienna and Lime. There is this humor, while bitter, comes away as passe, lightening up the film, making it an unconventional film noir in terms of tone. Would you agree?
Cathy Young: Absolutely! The music is astonishing; it manages to be lighthearted and poignant at the same time. (And it's a hugely popular piece in its own right.)
I can't think of another film that does such a brilliant job of making the ordinary look haunting and sometimes vaguely sinister. The close-ups on the faces of bystanders are a technique frequently utilized in the film that, in a way, places you, the viewer, into the scene and makes you a more direct observer. This is especially well done in the final scenes of the famous sewer chase, when the camera repeatedly lingers on the faces of the policemen and soldiers, conveying their intense focus and anxiety (they're hunting an armed man in a maze!). Several moments stand out for me as especially brilliant in visual and atmospheric terms:
There's the scene in which Holly and Anna, Harry Lime's girlfriend, show up to talk to the porter of Harry's apartment building (who was going to tell them about some odd details of Harry's death in a car accident, which we later realize was staged), only to find that the porter has been murdered and a crowd has gathered outside. The porter's little boy previously saw Holly have an animated argument with the porter, and he tells some of the people about it. More and more of them start suspiciously eyeing Holly and Anna, who quickly walk away; the little boy starts running after them, and then the rest of the crowd joins in. That little boy is incredibly creepy, and you feel bad about being creeped out by him because he's a little boy who has just lost his dad--which adds to the uneasy feeling!
There's the scene in which a car picks up Holly at the hotel and speeds through the nearly deserted streets (again, we get many reactions from startled passerby), while Holly reacts with growing dread thinking he's been kidnapped (and then a humorous resolution when we realize he's being taken to a lecture which he agreed to give but completely forgot about). And right after that, another great scene where he as being chased by baddies and runs into a darkened room in which he hears strange and terrifying sounds -- someone appears to be crying or moaning. Then he turns on the light, and the mysterious moaner turns out to be ... a parrot!
There's the famous scene in which Holly first sees Harry alive--or rather, first sees his feet, on which Anna's kitten has curled up, and then sees his face when someone in a window above turns on the light. There are some amazing light/dark combinations in that scene.
There's the equally famous "balloon man" scene: when Holly has agreed to entrap Harry, the two British military policemen in charge of the manhunt, Major Callaway and Sergeant Paine, are waiting by a street corner and see a giant shadow approaching that they initially take for Lime -- but it turns out to be an elderly balloon seller, who spots them and approaches them (threatening to blow their cover!) offering them to buy a balloon.
There's the shot of Harry appearing on top of a large pile of rubble as he heads to the café where Holly is waiting, while the "Harry Lime theme" bubbles up. It's such a great and meaningful visual -- the ruthless, sociopathic speculator dominating a cityscape of ruins.
And finally: The fingers of the wounded Harry reaching through the sewer grate in a final, futile attempt at escape, as the wind blows through the empty street. As much as you hate Harry by that point, it's a heartbreaking shot. (By the way, I just found out that those are not Orson Welles's fingers -- they're director Carol Reed's.)
Lack of Taste: What are your thoughts on the Vienna backdrop, which is important to the geopolitical stability of the country at that time? Graham Greene, who wrote and adapted the novel to the screen, inserted a level of uncertainty that justifies the motivation to Harry Lime's racketeering. He says, rather nihilistically "nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, so why should we?" Vienna was divided into four zones - Soviet Union, US, France, and Britain - and the black market was ballooning, while everyone was living in poverty. As a result, The Third Man is now known to be a rubble film (which is exclusively a genre for German movies, and this is the Hollywood equivalent), taking place in post-war cities that are in the process of recovering, and the subtext, I think that makes it more poignant, even compared to today's situation when we are living in a pandemic, combined with violent protests and awoke realignment of entrusted institutions.
Cathy Young: I agree that the background is essential. The half-destroyed city provides a haunting atmosphere, and the poverty and privation are a constant background (even at the theater where Anna works, the glitz and merriment of a comedy in period costumes are only a façade: the actors can't use the dressing room too long because electricity is precious, and they often get packets of tea, coffee or cigarettes thrown to them in instead of flowers by American and British soldiers). The recent war, the current flourishing of the black market, and the postwar global politics where the alliance that defeated the Nazis includes another totalitarian state, the Soviet Union, offer a setting in which it becomes easy to justify moral relativism. It'Interestingly,e Soviets are the bad guys in this film (we're at the start of the Cold War!): they're sheltering the criminal Harry while trying to get the innocent Anna deported; they're hypocritically bad allies, and Harry models themselves on them. ("They talk about the people and the proletariat, I talk about the suckers and the mugs - it's the same thing. They have their five-year plans, I have mine.") Yet the film ultimately asserts that morality does matter.
Lack of Taste: Let's end this off on a possibly bleaker note. There's a sense being exuded by the idea of personal loyalty being conflicted with civic and moral duty, which it never resolves. The final scene, where Anna ignores Holly after Lime's funeral makes this an ambiguous moment, and it certainly has something to do with Holly's connection with Lime, even after he kills him. Did you think that was the correct conclusion that Carol Reed deduces, or would there be something that needs to be improved?
Cathy Young: The conflict between personal loyalty and civic/moral duty is at the heart of the film, and as you say, it's never resolved, leaving the viewer with a disquieting but masterfully done sense of ambiguity. Holly ultimately chooses duty or "the right thing," after seeing the children crippled by the diluted penicillin Harry was peddling. (Though he arguably retreats to a middle ground between duty and friendship when he kills the wounded Harry -- with Harry's nodded consent -- instead of allowing him to be captured, tried, and presumably executed.) Anna chooses loyalty to Harry, and I think the ending in which she walks past Holly and he does not even try to stop her or talk to her affirms Holly's respect for her choice. But what are we, the audience, meant to think? Is there a "right" answer? The film certainly doesn't make it easy. It's overwhelmingly obvious that Harry doesn't deserve either Holly's or Anna's loyalty: it's not a case of "yeah, sure, he hurts strangers for profit, but he's a devoted friend/boyfriend." No, he's a guy who sells out Anna to the Soviets in exchange for being sheltered and is fully prepared to kill Holly on the Ferris wheel to cover his tracks until Holly reveals that he's already told the police about Harry being alive. (By the way, that's a brilliant moment from Orson Welles -- the terrifying look in his eyes when he says, "Don't think they'd look for a bullet hole after you hit the ground," then the change in his look when he realizes there's no point in killing Holly and shifts to "As if you'd ever do anything to me or I to you.") So, in that sense, you kind of want to grab Anna and shake some sense into her, no? (As Holly says, "You talk about him as if he had occasional bad manners.") And let's not forget that Anna's decision to protect Harry costs Sgt. Payne (probably the nicest character in the entire film!) his life. But can we say that she's wrong? Or simply that, as the ending seems to suggest, she and Holly both did the right thing in their own way? That's probably for each of us to answer.