The Third Man

THE THIRD MAN, which was filmed mostly in post–World War II Vienna, was released in Britain in 1949. The film was written by Graham

Greene, directed by Carol Reed, and produced by the American DavidSelznick and the British Michael Korda. On its release in Britain and later inthe United States, the film was an immediate success. It won the Grand Prixat the Cannes Film Festival, a British Academy Award for Best Film, and anAmerican Academy Award for the best black-and-white cinematography.The film is still highly esteemed. In 1999, the British Film Institute con-ducted a poll to determine the best British films ever made. Producers, di-rectors, writers, actors, technicians, academics, exhibitors, distributors,executives, and critics throughout the United Kingdom voted The ThirdMan as the top British film of all time.

Vienna, the setting of The Third Man, suffered massively toward the end ofWorld War II. “In the last months of the war Vienna would be bombed by theAmericans, besieged by the Russians and shelled by the retreating Germans.The statistics reveal what its peculiar fate—to be stuck in the middle—meant in practice. More than 8,000 buildings were completely destroyed,and another 40,000 damaged. . . . 270,000 people were made homeless. Noteven the dead were allowed to rest in peace: 536 bombs fell on the CentralCemetery, where Harry Lime [one of the main characters in The Third Man]would be buried” (Drazin 14). World War II ended in 1945, with the Ameri-cans, Russians, British, and French as victorious allies. Soon afterward, tensionsbetween the Russians and the other allies mounted, and the political uncertaintyof the cold war began. In 1948 Communists gained control of the governmentof Czechoslovakia, one of Austria’s neighbors; the Soviets blockaded westernaccess to Berlin; the United States began flying in supplies; and the belief waswidespread that war between the United States and the Soviet Union was im-minent. Vienna of the late 1940s was divided into occupied zones (British,American, French, and Russian). The city had extensive enduring damagefrom bombings, many refugees, food shortages, a thriving black market, andmany spies. 1 6 9

CHAPTER 5Expressive Film Techniques

in The Third Man

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The Third Man was one of the few films of itsday to be filmed mostly on location (some sceneswere shot in England), and most scenes were shot atnight or in dark conditions (Figure 5.1). The film-ing in Vienna began in October 1948 and lasted forseven weeks. Filming in England ran from late De-cember 1948 to late March 1949.

The film’s music was arranged and played onthe zither by Anton Karas. For some months after thefilm’s release, the “Third Man Theme” was high onthe popular music charts of both Britain and theUnited States. The zither, an ancient stringed instru-ment, is held in the lap or set on a table and strummedor plucked with a pick or fingers (Figure 5.2). It iswidely played in western Austria and Bavaria. In the1940s, few feature films used a solo instrument asthe only source of music, but Reed insisted on itsuse in the film.

DESCRIPTION

If you have not seen The Third Man recently orwill not be seeing it, please read the followingdescription at least twice.

During the opening montage, a narrator explainsthe situation in war-scarred Vienna as footage of theoccupied city is shown (Figures 5.3–5.4).1 In TheThird Man Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotten)who is an American writer of pulp western fiction,arrives in Vienna to do “publicity work for somekind of charity” that his friend Harry Lime (OrsonWelles) is running. Shortly after Martins arrives, helearns that Lime had recently been hit by a car andkilled. Martins arrives at the cemetery at the end of

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FIGURE 5.1 Filming on locationMany shots for The Third Man (1949) were filmed in the actuallarge, complex sewer system under Vienna. These cool, dark, anddamp settings required hard bright lighting, especially to create thekinds of sharp-edged shadows seen both here on the right wall andthroughout the film’s many night scenes. Larry Edmunds Cinema &Theatre

FIGURE 5.2 Music in The Third ManAnton Karas playing the zither on a tabletop. The five stringsclosest to him are for melody. The other strings are for harmony.Larry Edmunds Cinema & Theatre

1In the British version, director Carol Reed narrates slightly dif-ferent lines than Joseph Cotten does in the American version.The two versions, British and American, are quite similar in allother respects. When the film was first screened, it was shownin a 93-minute version, and occasionally that version is stillshown instead of the 104-minute one.

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FIGURE 5.3 Consecutive shots revealing contradictory aspects of the settingThe Third Man (1949) begins with a montage showing conditions in postwar Vienna. (a) Early inthe montage, a shot of Beethoven’s statue is seen. (b) The next shot shows two black-marketeers.The two shots quickly illustrate contradictory aspects of Vienna in the late 1940s: a city of bothculture and crime. Frame enlargements. London Film Productions. Library of Congress.

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FIGURE 5.5 Setting, mood, and meaningLate in the film’s last shot, Anna walks past Holly Martins,thereby rejecting him. Notice the gray sky, the leaf falling aboveAnna’s head, and the many fallen leaves, a reminder that it isautumn, the dying time of the year. Frame enlargement. LondonFilm Productions. Library of Congress.

FIGURE 5.4 Damaged settingLast shot of the opening montage, before Martins’s train arrivesat the station. Note the extensive, snow-covered bombingdamage in the foreground and the two scavengers. In the back-ground is the large ferris wheel that will be the setting for animportant scene late in the film. Frame enlargement. LondonFilm Productions. Library of Congress.

a) b)


Lime’s funeral. Soon he is suspicious about the circumstances of Lime’sdeath and stays on in Vienna to try to solve the mystery. In three eventfuldays, Martins meets Lime’s girlfriend, Anna, and Lime’s associates: Kurtz,Dr. Winkel, and Popescu. He also keeps meeting up with Major Calloway(Trevor Howard), a British officer in charge of the military police in theBritish section of occupied Vienna, because Calloway is trying to gather evi-dence about Lime’s associates who were involved with him in criminal activi-ties. The second night Martins is in Vienna, he unexpectedly sees Lime aliveafter all, but Lime runs away and disappears. Major Calloway finally con-vinces Martins that Lime had sold diluted penicillin that caused injury anddeath for many, including children. Because Martins both is repulsed bywhat Lime has done and wants to help Anna escape repatriation by Russianauthorities, he finally agrees to help lure Lime into the open so authorities maycapture him. Lime arrives at the café where the meeting is to take place, quicklygrasps the situation, nearly shoots Martins, but runs away as Calloway’s assis-tant, Sergeant Paine, arrives. During a chase through the sewers of Vienna,Lime shoots and kills Sergeant Paine, and Calloway shoots Lime. Martinscomes face to face with the trapped and injured Lime and, after a pause and aslight nod from Lime, shoots him. After a second funeral for Lime, Anna rejectsMartins.

For a more detailed description of the plot of The Third Man, see the Website for this book at <http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/phillips-film>.

There is neither space nor need for the following analysis to be compre-hensive. Instead the techniques discussed in the four chapters of Part Oneare used to illustrate some of the many ways in which they contribute to theimpact of The Third Man.

MISE EN SCÈNE

The following section illustrates some of the many ways in which settings,subjects, and composition contribute to the expressiveness of The Third Man.

SettingsBefore World War II, Vienna stood as a symbol of high art and classicism. Itwas once home to Johann Strauss and to Beethoven, whose statue isglimpsed early in the film dusted with snow (Figure 5.3a). Postwar Viennawas a changed city:

We see . . . the blue Danube but a dead body floats in it, and all we hear about itlater is that the sewers empty into it. . . . The Prater [amusement park] . . . is a



scene of devastation, and the Riesenrad [large ferris wheel], site of amorous mo-ments, is now a meeting place for a killer and a vantage point for his cynical phi-losophy; the General Hospital, home of the famous Vienna Medical school, is alast home of dying children; once luxurious Palaces of the nobility are nowrental apartments with peeling plaster. . . . And the charming Viennese? Hardfaces full of misery, fear, and suspicion. And the beautiful women of Vienna?The only real beauty is a foreigner [the Italian who plays Anna]. (Jarka 254)

In the late 1940s, Vienna was also beset with the corruption and deceit of thepostwar black market (Figure 5.3b).

Throughout the film, the settings are cold and damp; people wear coatsand hats, and sometimes their breath is visible. Most of the film is dark be-cause so much of it was filmed at night or in the sewers. Since it is autumn,trees are largely leafless (Figure 5.5 on p. 171). And in nearly every exteriorscene, the bombed ruins of Vienna are visible in the corners or background ofthe image (Figure 5.4). The film inundates the spectator with images com-bining Vienna’s culture and beauty with its destroyed buildings. The entrance-way to Anna’s apartment building has classical arches on the outside but pilesof bricks and rubble on the inside. Sometimes the film combines images ofdamage with darkness. Lime makes his third and final entry into the storyatop a badly damaged building. In the next shot, he is seen amid the roughremains of one of the building’s walls to the left of him, the jagged remainsto the top of another wall underfoot and to the right, and deep blackness inmost of the right side of the frame. Lime is associated with destruction anddarkness.

SubjectsAs the similarity between their first names suggests, Harry Lime and HollyMartins are by no means opposites. Both are attracted to the same woman.Both men are disruptive and destructive Americans—Lime deliberately so,Martins inadvertently. Both are responsible for the deaths of others, andtheir fates are intertwined. Only Paine’s timely arrival prevents Lime fromshooting Martins, and Martins shoots Lime in the film’s most ambiguousscene (Figure 5.6). The viewer cannot know if Martins kills Lime to save himfrom the authorities, to punish him for his uncaring maiming and murderingof children and others, if he kills him because Lime subtly seems to invitehim to end his misery, or if because of a combination of motives. One mayinterpret Lime as the American business operator willing to use and sacrificeothers to achieve security and a profit and Martins’s actions throughout thefilm as an indictment of American naïve, well-meaning interference in inter-national affairs (Figure 5.7).

Clothing is also used to support characterization, perhaps especiallyLime’s fondness for black: shoes, slacks, coat, muffler or scarf, and hat. Ofcourse, as a night creature, he would be safest entirely in inky black, but there

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FIGURE 5.6 Setting, subject, and compositionIn the last image of Lime, he is trapped and cornered in a darkenedsewer, and he is positioned somewhat off-center in the frame. Thesetting and composition help convey the subject’s abysmal situationand desperation. Frame enlargement. London Film Productions. Libraryof Congress.

FIGURE 5.7 Martins’s rushing forward carelesslyAs Martins arrives at Lime’s building, he walks under a ladder, an actionthat has long been considered bad luck—and indeed Holly Martins isabout to undergo a series of mostly unpleasant adventures. It also showsthat he is reckless: it can be dangerous to walk under ladders withoutchecking what is above. As the film later shows, Holly Martins oftenrushes into situations without adequately weighing the dangers involved.

The filmmakers could easily have moved the ladder or filmed thescene from another angle and thus kept the ladder out of the frame orfar off to the side. Or they could have drawn more attention to it, forexample by having Martins look at it or hesitate briefly before walkingunder it. But they filmed and edited the scene as they did, probably hop-ing most viewers would notice the ladder and appreciate its significance.This scene illustrates one of the paradoxes of Western art: less may bemore. Frame enlargement. London Film Productions. Library of Congress.

FIGURE 5.8 A point-of-view Dutch-angle shot Here is what Martins sees on his arrival at the Cultural ReeducationSection, where members are eager to hear his speech about the crisisof faith in the modern novel. Martins knows nothing about the topicand has been so caught up in trying to clear his friend’s name that hearrives unexpectedly and totally unprepared. No wonder that fromMartins’s point of view the situation looks off balance. Frame enlarge-ment. London Film Productions. Library of Congress.


is an obvious symbolic appropriateness to his clothing choices, as there is inthe mixture of black, grays, and white that the complex and conflicted Martinswears. Clothing is also used to show Lime’s continuing impact on Anna. Shesleeps in his pajamas. In one scene, Lime’s monogram, HL, is briefly visibleon the pajama top Anna wears.

Cotten had worked in Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) as Kane’s journalistfriend who refuses to betray his principles by writing a dishonest review. OrsonWelles’s impact on audiences when The Third Man was originally shown wasalso affected by his earlier roles. Welles memorably depicted much of the com-plexity of the American male as the title character in Citizen Kane. In the titlerole in Macbeth (1948), he played a traitorous usurper eventually broughtlow by the forces for order and lawful succession. Lime is not only evil butalso charismatic. Throughout the film, Anna remains unconditionally loyalto him. It is possible to interpret Martins’s act of shooting Lime as an exam-ple of this same sense of loyalty. Lime has also exerted a spell over manyviewers who years after seeing the film remember best Harry Lime andthink of Orson Welles as the film’s star.

CompositionDutch angles are used extensively in the film—some critics believe exces-sively—and the overall sense of the film’s many compositions is of peopleand things being askew (Figure 5.8).

The filmmakers also use foreground and background interplay and thesides of the image expressively. When Martins is whisked away in the speed-ing taxi and he and viewers fear that he is being driven to his death, threeshots show the driver looking forward in the foreground, vertical bars and aglass barrier immediately behind him, and behind bars the hapless Martins,seemingly imprisoned—as indeed he is for the duration of the ride. Perhapsthe film’s most expressive composition is one of its most famous—the film’slast shot (see Figure 5.5). As Martins waits off to the left of the frame, Annawalks forward. Perhaps she will fill that huge empty space in the middle ofthe frame. Instead, she walks forward, eyes straight ahead, past Martins thenoff the frame to the right, and viewers are left to experience the empty spaceand the empty leaf-strewn road that runs into an unknown background. Thefilm ends, as it so often returned to, an image out of balance as far as its hu-man subject is concerned.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

The Third Man uses a wide variety of cinematographic techniques, all ofwhich contribute to the film’s impact. Below we look at a few examples of thelighting and camera work.

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LightingLighting and the lack of it are two of the most expressive techniques used inThe Third Man. In more than one sense, it is a very dark film (best seen as afilm or DVD or laser disc but not a videotape). Perhaps the most famous ex-ample of the film’s use of lighting occurs when Martins first sees Lime in thedarkened doorway. After Martins approaches the doorway, a neighbor aboveturns on a light, and Martins glimpses Lime smiling slightly sardonically(Figure 5.9). The camera is positioned slightly below Lime’s eye level andaccentuates the shadows out of which Lime briefly materializes.

At the beginning of the film when Martins arrives at the Vienna trainstation and at Harry Lime’s apartment building, it is light although notcheerfully bright. Most of the rest of the film takes place at night or in themostly dark underground sewers, and the film’s images tend to be tinged orimmersed in blackness. Appropriately, the film’s last scene, at the cemeteryagain, takes place during the day. As in the film’s beginning, the lighting is notbright and cheerful but soft and subdued. In the film’s last shot, Anna’s longfaint shadow suggests that it is late afternoon, the dying part of the day. Al-though images of death permeate the scene (for example, tombstones in thebackground of nearly every shot), the light (and absence of Dutch angles)suggest that a greater degree of normalcy has returned after Lime’s death.

Often in the film viewers see a character’s larger-than-life distorted mov-ing shadow on an exterior wall. The effect can be a little eerie. Sometimes wesee the shadow before we see its source, most notably the ominous shadow ofa balloon man who appears shortly before Lime’s final emergence (Figure 5.10).At other times, character and viewers see only the shadow, not its source, as whenMartins spots Lime, who quickly runs away. As Martins brings Calloway andPaine toward the square where Lime had vanished, he explains that he followedLime’s shadow until he disappeared. In the chase in the sewer, viewers also some-times see only the large distorted shadows of men without seeing their sources.

CameraEven the first-time viewer of the film will notice that the settings are oftenfilmed in Dutch angles (Figure 5.8). This technique is first used when Mar-tins talks to the porter in the stairwell of the building where Lime lived. Theporter is seen against a background that seems to slant downward to the left,whereas Martins is seen against a background that seems to be angled down-ward to the right. The contrasting shots of the porter and Martins are thefirst of many in the film showing the characters off balance relative to theirenvironment, to each other, and to viewers.

As is demonstrated in Chapter 2, camera angle and distance can be pow-erful expressive options, and so they are in The Third Man. For example,when Kurtz, Winkel, and Popescu meet the fourth man on the bridge, thefourth man’s identity is obscured by an extreme long shot and a high-angle,



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extreme long shot. Camera angles and distances can alsoincrease or decrease the size, status, power, or impor-tance of the human figure. In the scene where Martins issuspected of murdering the porter, an extreme low-angleclose-up of a man’s head invests him with both size anddominance and conveys some sense of his danger to Mar-tins. On the other hand, both a high-angle, extreme longshot from the ferris wheel of the antlike people belowand a high-angle, extreme long shot of Martins pacingoutside the military police headquarters reduce the sub-jects not only in size but also in importance or power.

EDITING

The film uses continuity editing: shot follows shot in aclear, efficient manner, as in the scene where the taxidriver races Martins to the meeting. Occasionally,though, a shot does not occur where viewers might ex-pect. Consider the scene where Martins goes to visit Dr.Winkel. Martins stands alone in a street, looking at thebuilding. In the next shot and scene, we do not see himoutside Dr. Winkel’s door or entering Winkel’s apartmentor already inside the apartment. Instead, we see a knifeslicing a cooked chicken as the doorbell rings (announc-ing Martins’s arrival). Another example of editing helpingto confound the viewer’s expectations occurs in the se-quence in which Martins is being rushed to the CulturalReeducation Section meeting. Film conventions aboutspeeding cars and abductions have conditioned us how toread this scene; thus, experienced movie viewers suspectthat something terrible is finally going to happen to theintrusive and bumbling Martins. As the taxi speedsthrough the Viennese streets, the pace quickens, and thefast cutting between shots showing the helpless andalarmed Martins, shots of the speeding taxi, and shots ofthe bewildered bystanders can alarm viewers and makethem even a little dizzy. When Martins is dropped by the door leading intothe meeting hall where he is to deliver a lecture, the audience realizes that ithas been misled, in part by editing usually used in movie abduction scenes.

Reaction shots are used in varied, expressive ways. The scene whereMartins discovers that the porter has been murdered includes five reactionshots of people on the sidewalk who suspect Martins of the murder. An ear-lier scene ends disturbingly with a reaction shot without showing what theporter is reacting to (Figure 5.11 on p. 178). The same strategy of using reac-

FIGURE 5.9 Bright but not hard lighting dispellingsome darknessA light, supposedly from above, inadvertently exposes Lime,who has been hiding in a darkened doorway. Lime is a creatureof darkness, brought forth from the shadows only unwillingly.Frame enlargement. London Film Productions. Library of Congress.

FIGURE 5.10 A shadow used to alarm and misleadA larger-than-life shadow, one of many in this very dark film,here at a suspenseful moment when the military authoritiesare expecting Lime’s arrival at a café. The source of theshadow, though, is an old balloon man. Frame enlargement.London Film Productions. Library of Congress.


tion shots without showing what is being reacted to isused repeatedly in the scene of Calloway and Martins’svisit to the children’s ward of a hospital (Figure 5.12). Inboth scenes, the impact can be greater on viewers becausetheir imaginations can conjure up fearful images.

Fast cutting serves different functions in The ThirdMan. The film begins with a montage supplying an enor-mous amount of information about postwar Vienna, in-cluding two consecutive but discontinuous brief shotsillustrating contradictory aspects of the occupied city(Figure 5.3). Later in the film, the montage of evidenceabout Lime’s criminal activities demonstrates how muchinformation can be conveyed in thirty or so seconds ofskillfully edited film. That montage also incorporates abrief shot showing the devastating impact the informa-tion is having on Martins. Fast cutting is also used in thewild taxi ride and early in the sewer chase. The film evenincludes an example of expanded time. After Martins seesLime illuminated briefly in the doorway, he begins tocross the street but stops abruptly and backs up a bit as acar speeds in front of him. In the next shot, from a differ-ent angle, the car is farther back than it was at the con-clusion of the previous shot, and Martins has to waitagain briefly as the car again speeds in front of him.There is a slight repetition of part of the movement (thecar’s and Martins’s), a slight expansion of time, so thatLime’s escape seems a little more plausible (just barely).

SOUNDSometimes sound is used in the film to confuse both char-acters and viewers. An example occurs in the sewer sequencewhen Lime stands immobilized before several archwaysbecause he cannot match sound to image. Because of themany echoes, in much of the sewer sequence sound obscureswho is where doing what. Sound is also used to mystify, mis-lead, then surprise when Martins runs away from two thugsand enters a darkened room and hears an unidentifiablesound. It sounds something like a baby or something elseuntil it squawks and the light reveals the parrot.

Sound is also often used to establish a situation im-mediately. Martins’s opening to his “speech” to the Cultural ReeducationSection is curt yet oh so revealing. His “well” followed immediately by hisclearing of his throat are faint, trailing off, revealing more than a little un-certainty and embarrassment. After one word and that additional vocal, we1 7 8

FIGURE 5.11 A reaction shot but not a shot of what is being reacted toA brief scene in which the porter agrees to meet with Martinsthat night ends with this reaction shot. Although viewersnever see who or what the porter is seeing, the implicationhere and especially later in the film is that he is seeing some-one who has come to murder him. Frame enlargement.London Film Productions. Library of Congress.

FIGURE 5.12 Repeated reaction shots but no shots of what is being reacted toIn the children’s ward of a hospital, Martins, accompanied byCalloway, sees the results of Lime’s diluted penicillin. Through-out the scene, viewers see six shots of Martins’s reactions tothe children in the hospital beds but never see what he sees.Those horrors are left to the viewers’ imaginations. Frameenlargement. London Film Productions. Library of Congress.


viewers know his “speech” will be a disaster. Sound is also used to help ad-vance the plot. The meowing of Anna’s cat directs Martins’s attention to thedarkened doorway and in turn to Lime. No cat sound, no discovery of Lime.

Music, too, is used expressively. The musical theme associated with Limeis first played after the completion of his first funeral service. The sametheme is used many times thereafter. A fragment of it, played slowly and atlow volume, is heard as Martins looks at Anna from offstage and tells her that hewas a friend of Harry Lime. The theme accompanies each major appearanceof Lime. It is heard after the sudden illumination of Lime in the darkeneddoorway but only until the car drives by. A fragment of it, played slowly andwith trills, is heard as Martins enters the empty square where Lime has disap-peared and for the rest of the brief scene. We hear the melody in the scenewhere the coffin is dug up, as if to mislead viewers into expecting Lime’s bodyin the coffin. Shortly after the coffin is opened and Calloway and Paine seethat it contains the body of the missing orderly, Joseph Hobbin, the musicquickly fades out; it is no longer useful to the scene. As Martins waits forLime near the ferris wheel and as Lime arrives, walking vigorously and seem-ing jovial, Lime’s melody is played loudly and briskly. When Lime appearsatop the damaged building before his night meeting with Martins, his musi-cal theme announces his arrival before we see him close enough to see forcertain who it is. As Lime opens the door to the café and hears Anna beratingMartins, his entry is not surprisingly accompanied by his musical theme. Thetheme is played softly and slowly along with indistinct voices of the men inthe tunnels during the last three shots of the final scene between Lime andMartins, as Lime is losing his vitality and Martins is in anguish about whetherto shoot his friend. After we hear the gunshot, the music stops abruptly. Thetheme is heard a last time immediately after the conclusion of Lime’s secondfuneral, again played at low volume and slowly. It is heard until the jeep Cal-loway is driving passes Anna, a final reminder of the man, drained of his life.Throughout the film the musical theme announces Lime’s appearances andelsewhere suggests the level of his energy or mood and his impact on events.It might even be regarded as his life spirit.

As these highly selective examples of the expressiveness of film tech-niques illustrate, The Third Man is an accomplished example of the ways thatmise en scène, cinematography, editing, and sound can help reveal and sup-port a film’s settings, subjects, moods, and meanings. The expressiveness ofthe film’s techniques helps re-create the settings vividly and memorably andhelps bring to life characters and story widely esteemed for their complexity,subtlety, entertainment value, and enduring appeal.

Drazin, Charles. In Search of The Third Man. London: Methuen, 1999.Jarka, Horst. “The Third Man and Vienna: From Gray to Evergreen.” Modern Austrian

Literature 32.3 (1999): 253–70.

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WORKS CITED


The Third Man

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