Filling In The Blanks: "The Third Man" (1949)

"Filling in the blanks" will be my little attempt at filling in blank holes in my knowledge of film classics and must-see film. A few embarrasing thruths might surface in the process.



The Third Man (1949)
Dir: Carol Reed.

"You were born to be murdered."
- Major Calloway

Roger Ebert (and countless others) love this movie, deeming it a classic in cinema, which is what finally got me to take a look at it. If it weren't for the heaps of praise that this film has received the only real hook it would seem to have for the uninvolved is the appearance of one Orson Welles, whom the DVD Covers seems to heavily oversell. Welles is in the movie for about 3 scenes in total, only speaking in one, but these are pivotal scenes and every appereance he makes pushes the plot forward elegantly, every second he is on screen feels like a fulfilling minute.

The film is set in a Post-WWII Vienna, a city in ruins, with four uncoordinated police forces. The police are fighting an uphill battle against the black market that thrives in the city. Into the middle of all this our protagonist, Hollie Martin (Joseph Cotten) arrives, penniless, and seeking his friend Harry Lime. Unfortunately he arrives just in time for Lime's funeral, finding himself stranded in Vienna, obsessed with solving what he suspects is Harry's murder.

I'm told that the films late second act plot twist is common knowledge, and indeed I was aware of it myself before even popping the disc into my DVD player. However I'll refrain from spoiling the movie, as I see how the twist increases the viewing experience.

Not that the movie itself rests on its twist alone, such as movie like "The Sixth Sense" and to a lesser degree "Fight Club" have been accused of, far from it. It is indeed highly enjoyable even if you have been spoiled.

The acting hardly ever disappoints and the city of Vienna is a fascinating backdrop, whether it is in the bars, the ruined streets or the sewers, where the climax is set. Those sewers might conceivably be the cleanest sewers in the history of mankind, theres not even a single complaint about the smell. Maybe the citizens of Vienna were just overly anal amidst their ruined city.

The movie does however have a few dents in the paint. The exposition on the ruined Vienna is given in a slightly clumsy opening voiceover by noone in particular, and it seems slightly jarring that this narrator never appears again. That said, Casablanca, another movie counted as one of the greatest ever, is also guilty of doing this. But where Casablanca has an impersonal narrator, The Third Man clearly treis to inject him with personality, as if he were a person we would meet later, only this never happens.

Holly Martins is also a character that makes the movies litterary origins a bit too obvious, being a cowboy novel writer, though this has a quite excellent and light-hearted payoff in an otherwise slightly dark movie, as he finds himself doing an lecture in front of a room full of unimpressed high-brow litterates.

Is this movie really worth all the praise? Much of it is certainly well-deserved, the movie is an exciting watch even today. Nevermind all the talk of "best ever" - the movie is an old-fashioned good watch, and honestly that was all I really cared about.