Movie Review: The Third Man

The Third Man (Or An Appreciation of A Wine Salesman)
Directed by Carol Reed
On Netflix

"You know what the fellow said - in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." Harry Lime

This past week the best damned movie review site on the information superhighway of broken dreams came to an end. For just about two years The Dissolve collected some of the best writers in film criticism and unleashed them on their favourite subject. When Roger Ebert died, I had started looking for a new place to submerge myself in great film writing. The Dissolve was that oasis, that friend's pool on a hot summer day. And, now, it's gone, gone, gone. And that makes me sad. The Dissolve has closed its doors, shuttered the windows. We can still visit the house, but the lights are off and no-one is answering the door.

So, an apology of sorts. I couldn't get the motivation to sit in a theatre to watch the latest in a franchise of dwindling returns, or an animated 91 minute commercial. Or a sequel to Steve Soderbergh's stripper movie. Or yet another found footage horror movie. Just couldn't do it. Nope. Could not find the energy to care even a little bit about reboots or cash-ins. I needed more of what Inside Out or Mad Max: Fury Road brought to the party - courageous film making. Films that push the boundaries of mainstream story telling, films that break rules, that show a maverick streak. I love mainstream films, I really do like spectacle. But right now, with the loss of The Dissolve, I needed something more, something brave.

And I decided to do something that I've been thinking about since I started this movie reviewing thing. This past May 6th was the hundredth birthday of arguably the most important film maker of, well, ever, Orson Welles. And I've wanted to celebrate that life in some way since the calendar turned to 2015. I've wanted to bring a little something to the birthday party since I started this column. No matter how minor or poorly thought out it may be I didn't want to show up at the celebrations empty handed. And so I took my current malaise as an opportunity to watch, for the first time, a film that Welles starred in, even though he is only on screen for maybe ten minutes.

A quick biography: Orson George Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He would go onto revolutionize theatre, radio, and film. The myth that has surrounded his radio play production of The War of The Worlds has only grown over the decades. His first film, Citizen Kane, is always listed among the greatest films ever made. Citizen Kane changed everything, from the more technical side of film making, like the use of deep focus, to the fractured narrative. Without Kane, there is no Stanley Kubrick, no Martin Scorsese, no Quentin Tarantino, no Kathryn Bigelow. The greatest films of the past half-century or so, they don't exist. What's your favourite movie of the past 70 years? Without Kane that film looks completely differently, is told differently. Even the things we as audiences take for granted, something so minor like a ceiling in a scene set in a room, that doesn't exist without Kane. Welles starred-in, directed, produced, and co-wrote Kane. He was 26.

Welles never played the Hollywood studio game very well. He finished only 13 films. He only had one Oscar on his mantle, the one he shared for Best Original Screenplay for Kane. He would beg and borrow and take any job to try to complete a film project. He would spend years trying to complete projects. If Wikipedia is to be believed, 15 years on Don Quixote, 6 years on The Other Side of the Wind, 9 years on something called Orson Welles' Magic Show.

When he died in 1985, he was more famous for being the morbidly overweight seller of frozen peas and cheap California sparkling wine. A one-hit wonder who would appear on The Tonight Show and entertain Johnny Carson with stories of old Hollywood. For some he was the guy at the end of The Muppet Movie, when the muppets make it to Hollywood. For others he was the voice of something called Unicron, in The Transformers: The Movie. But mostly, in 1985, it was the frozen peas and the mediocre California sparkling wine.

But let's go farther back in time, to 1949.

The Third Man is set in post-war Vienna. Joseph Cotten plays Holly Martins, a broke writer of Western novels. He travels to Vienna to meet up with his childhood friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles), who has offered him a job. Unfortunately for him, fortunately for us, when Holly arrives he discovers that Harry has been killed in an accident, hit by a truck while crossing the street. He attends the funeral. Among the attendees are a beautiful woman, played by Alida Valli, and a couple of British Army Policemen, Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) and Sergeant Paine (Bernard Lee, yes that Bernard Lee you Bond film fans you). Calloway tells Holly his friend was a criminal and suggests Holly leave Vienna. Paine is a fan of Holly's books.

Holly decides to stay in town to clear his friend's name. He meets Harry's sketchy friends, who can't seem to keep their stories straight. He gets close to the beautiful woman from the funeral, Anna, Harry's girlfriend. As Holly tries to dig deeper into the truth, to prove Harry innocent of the claims by the military police, he starts to hear stories that don't add up, contradictory stories of Harry's death. Harry was crossing the street because a friend called to him. His driver was the driver that hit him. His doctor was walking by after Harry was hit. Two men carried Harry off of the street. Three men carried him. He died immediately. Before he died Harry requested that Holly and Anna be looked after.

For nearly two-thirds of the film, Harry Lime is the subject of nearly every conversation. His absence makes the myth of Harry Lime grow larger by the moment. His shadow falls over the characters, his presence is felt in nearly every frame. When he finally does appear on screen, the moment is one of the most iconic images in film history. He's only seen for seconds, surrounded by shadows. But in that moment Welles becomes the star of The Third Man. His presence so permeates the movie, that even though he is on screen for maybe ten minutes total, this is an Orson Welles starring film. It takes a special kind of actor, a special kind of ego to not be a disappointment after over an hour of myth-making. Orson Welles was that actor.

Director Carol Reed builds up the tension in Graham Greene's script with a deep collaboration with his cinematographer Robert Krasker. With harsh lighting, expressionist shadows, Dutch angles, The Third Man is unlike any film made in decades. Combine that with the incredibly catchy but truly odd score, played on a zither, and the use of real Vienna locations, with its landscape of rubble and craters and bullet holes and other war damage, and the use of real Vienna citizens as extras, with their post-traumatic stress visible in every wrinkle, we get an incredible sense of time and place. This is Vienna as the Cold War begins. This is Vienna after years of war.

This film is so damn entertaining. It's the kind of movie that can remind a person of why they enjoy watching movies. It's funny, sad, tense, suspenseful, heartbreaking. Don't let the absence of robots and explosions and CGI guys in tights fighting other CGI guys in tights scare you off, Kellie. I think you'd love this movie.

The Third Man trivia time. For a long, long time I kept hearing this rumour that Welles had directed portions of The Third Man. But what I find online is that this is very much a Carol Reed movie. What Welles did bring to the project, other than his amazing skills as an actor and his gigantic screen presence, is that quote up on the top - the cuckoo clock bit. Also, supposedly Graham Greene based the character of Harry Lime on his former boss, Kim Philby. What makes that kind of dinner party amazing is that the script was written in 1948. Kim Philby didn't defect until 1963.