If someone asked you to name a movie starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, I suppose your answer would be Citizen Kane.\u00a0 Well, here\u2019s a different answer, \u201cThe Third Man.\u201d\u00a0 And here\u2019s another difference, Welles isn\u2019t the filmmaker here, he\u2019s just a supporting player.\u00a0 Of course, being Orson Welles in 1948 means that \u201cjust\u201d has a little more to it than just \u201cjust.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joseph Cotton is Holly Martins an American writer of dime novel westerns.\u00a0 He arrives in Vienna which at the time is an occupied city divided into sectors controlled by the post-WWII victorious allies (the United States, Britain, France and Russia). \u00a0This is narrated for us along with the realities of such a conquered place.\u00a0 The locals survive by supplementing their impoverished legal trades with black market transactions on everything from cigarettes to tires to adulterated pharmaceuticals.\u00a0 Holly has come to Vienna to work for his childhood friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles).\u00a0 It is never explained what exactly he was supposed to be employed as but that quickly becomes an academic question.<\/p>\n
When Holly reaches the building where Harry lives, he\u2019s told by the building porter that Harry was run over by a truck and killed a day or two before.\u00a0 Holly goes to the burial and there we see the film\u2019s other main characters although not all of them are introduced.\u00a0 After the funeral Martins is approached by two British military policemen, Major Calloway, played by Trevor Howard and Sergeant Paine played with great cockney panache by Bernard Lee.\u00a0 It turns out Sergeant Paine is a literary fan of Matins\u2019 novels and indirectly facilitates the plot by introducing Martins to a literary society in Vienna that will bankroll Martins\u2019 travelling expenses in return for a lecture on modern literature, a subject with which Martins is sorely unfamiliar.<\/p>\n
But what Calloway and Paine are really interested in is warning Martins to leave Vienna to avoid the fallout from the police investigation into the criminal activities of his friend Harry Lime.\u00a0 Martins is insulted by the statement that his friend was a criminal and decides to stay in Vienna to find out what really was the case with his friend and somehow clear his name with the police.<\/p>\n
Through a meeting with one of Harry\u2019s friends Holly finds out about Harry\u2019s girlfriend Anna and he goes to see her to try and get the true story from her.\u00a0 As Holly and Anna talk about Harry, we find out that she is like Holly an idealistic individual that Harry charmed and dragged into his dangerous but exciting life.\u00a0 We begin to suspect that the police are right about Harry.\u00a0 And together Holly and Anna discover some strange details about Harry\u2019s death.\u00a0 The building porter reveals to them that when Harry was run down by the truck, in addition to the two friends of Harry\u2019s that stayed to give testimony to the police about the accident there was a \u201cthird man\u201d who did not stay but rushed away.\u00a0 And the porter\u2019s story differed from the account that Holly was given by Harry\u2019s friends, in ways that could only be obvious lies.<\/p>\n
As the couple begin to ruffle feathers there begins some fallout.\u00a0 Anna is visited by the police, including Calloway and Paine.\u00a0 It turns out that she has a passport that Harry manufactured.\u00a0 And because of this she will have to be deported to the Russian zone for eventual deportation to Czechoslovakia.\u00a0 Further fallout occurs with the subsequent murder of the porter.\u00a0 And finally, one of Harry\u2019s \u201cfriends\u201d threatens Holly if he continues looking into Harry\u2019s death.\u00a0 When Holly defies him, some thugs pursue Holly through the nightscape of bombed out Vienna.\u00a0 He escapes and ends up at Anna\u2019s apartment where we find that he is falling in love with her.\u00a0 But just when the movie is drifting away from Harry, Anna\u2019s cat down on the street below her apartment signals that a stranger is lurking and when a window in one of the adjoining apartments flashes on, it reveals that the lurker is Harry Lime.\u00a0 Holly runs out to catch him but Lime escapes into an entrance to the sewers of Vienna.<\/p>\n
And now Holly contacts Harry\u2019s friends that he knows Harry is alive and wants to meet him in a public (safe) place; a giant Ferris Wheel nearby in the city.\u00a0 And sure enough, Harry shows up and they get into one of the cars of the wheel and talk.\u00a0 And now Holly learns the truth about Harry.\u00a0 He is the criminal mastermind who runs a stolen penicillin racket.\u00a0 Holly tells him that the police have discovered that a medical orderly that was in on the penicillin racket was murdered to provide Harry\u2019s \u201cbody\u201d for his faked death.\u00a0 When Holly confronts him with the deaths that have occurred from the diluted drugs he sells Harry reveals just how callous and Machiavellian he truly is.\u00a0 Harry reiterates his desire to have Holly join him in his criminal enterprise but he also clearly warns him that bringing in the police would be a very dangerous thing for Holly to do.<\/p>\n
Holly decides that because of Harry\u2019s poor treatment of Anna he will make a deal with Calloway to allow them to catch Harry in exchange for Calloway fixing Anna\u2019s deportation problem.\u00a0 When Anna finds out that her freedom is being purchased at the cost of Harry\u2019s betrayal to the police, she rejects it and also rejects Holly\u2019s affection.\u00a0 She says she will remain loyal to Harry.\u00a0 Holly then decides to leave Vienna and leave Harry, Anna and the police to their own devices.\u00a0 But on the way to the airport Calloway brings Martins to the hospital where the child victims of Harry\u2019s drugs are housed.\u00a0 Their broken bodies fill Martin with remorse and he agrees to be the bait in a trap to catch Harry.\u00a0 Harry shows up and at the last second Anna shows up and warns Harry away.\u00a0 A pursuit follows with police guarding all the exits from the sewer system.\u00a0 Holly, Calloway and Paine are in on the hunt.\u00a0 Finally with Harry cornered, Holly too openly approaches Harry.\u00a0 While Paine attempts to pull Holly back out of the line of fire, he is himself fatally shot by Lime.\u00a0 Calloway manages to shoot Lime as he retreats to a last exit below the street.\u00a0 Unable to exit the sewer grating he waits as Holly approaches him with Paine\u2019s gun in hand.\u00a0 Harry looks at Martins and nods his head in acceptance and a shot rings out followed by Martins walking back to the police line.\u00a0 At the second burial of Harry Lime we see Calloway and Martins.\u00a0 Anna is there separately.\u00a0 Calloway has his jeep and is once again supposed to drive Martins to the airport.\u00a0 But as they pass Anna, Martins tells Calloway to let him out.\u00a0 The final shot is a long take of Anna approaching a waiting Martins and then continuing on without looking at him at all.<\/p>\n
This is in many ways an utterly strange movie, especially from an American point of view.\u00a0 There is something disturbing to the American sensibility about the degraded and broken aspect of Vienna.\u00a0 This is communicated in the images of the broken cityscape but also in the furtiveness and guarded nature of the inhabitants\u2019 speech and behavior.\u00a0 Dishonesty and criminality and just the wretchedness of life in the shattered place pervades the movie.\u00a0 Also, the film has a soundtrack that is a repetition of a song played on a zither.\u00a0 This is a stringed Eastern European instrument that I can\u2019t claim to enjoy all that much.<\/p>\n
By contrast, the Anglophone characters, Martins, Calloway, Paine and eventually Lime are wholly different.\u00a0 They exude energy and confidence.\u00a0 They seem to be bits of normalcy suspended in this fog of hopelessness.\u00a0 Even Harry Lime, the criminal mastermind has that American quality to speak openly and unashamedly even about his evil.\u00a0 He swims in this putrid ocean but he hasn\u2019t assumed the coloration of his surroundings.<\/p>\n
As I said the story is very strange and I think off-putting.\u00a0 But the scene at the Ferris Wheel is very interesting.\u00a0 We get to hear the devil defend his trade.\u00a0 And that I think is the interesting thing about the movie.\u00a0 Calloway and Paine are fun in their proper Englishness.\u00a0 The Holly\/Anna relationship really didn\u2019t do much for me.\u00a0 So, the show is Holly and Harry.\u00a0 And coming right down to it it\u2019s Harry.<\/p>\n