The Third Man redux...it's Noir to me

Every year I re-watch The Third Man film made in the late 40's. Many of you know it, no doubt watched this black and white classic several times. If you haven't, treat yourself, it's on Netflix US right now.
I always discover something new.  What I took away from this viewing was the Noir aspect.

Maybe I've been so seduced by the zither music, visuals and camera shots, the atmosphere of cobbled streets,  the sewer chase, war torn Vienna and the stellar actors that this hadn't registered in quite the way it had before.
The opening and ending shots take place in the cematary - in essence - sorry, it's a spoiler but The Third Man came out in 1948, so I figure a spoiler for a sixty nine year old movie is ok.

You could look at it this way - guy meets girl, girls grieving over dead boyfriend, will he succeed to win her over? The opening shot is a mirror of the last - guy doesn't get girl, he's up the creek and more disillusioned than when he arrived in Vienna. The girl has 'spoiler' lost Harry Lime twice.
When I do a workshop on setting, usually I start with the opening minute of this film.

There's narration over shots of pre-War Vienna, the Hapsburg palaces, the mention of the post-war black market and furtive men with a sleeve of watches, the four armed Allied presence - France, UK, Russia and US and the not so lucky black marketeer shown floating upside down in the Danube.
Bang. All in a minute, with the zither playing the theme, we see/hear the former glory, view the rubble strewn detritus of war, see the refugees scraping by for a living, or not,  the black market, the danger of the Allied Occupation dividing the city into four zones. To me, it's a brilliant introduction; the scene is set, danger is foreshadowed, and conflict introduced. Graham Greene, the story goes, was sent to postwar Vienna to write a screenplay which turned into this story.

That, he did. He used Vienna as a character as much as Harry Lime, who is probably in the movie about fifteen minutes, but his presence is what this film is about. Harry Lime, spoiler alert, is and here comes the twist, the Third Man. The first time I ever saw this movie, my jaw dropped. I never saw it coming. It still gives me shivers when the cat nestles on his shoes and headlights illuminate the face of undead Harry Lime.

Orson Welles, who played Lime, was two weeks late for filming and didn't want to film in the sewers. The producer Carol Reed was on a deadline and couldn't twiddle his or the crew's thumbs so he spent a lot of his waiting time, filming at night and experimenting with camera angles and shots.

Thanks to a late Welles, we have a much richer film. He contributed the famous line about the Swiss and the Cuckoo Clock but the rest was pure Graham Greene. Watch it today and it's still seamless. Tight. Dialogue, I for one, wish I could write. There's comedic touches, and nothing gets in the way of pacing and tension and each shot with Vienna a masterpiece.

Graham Greene gives Holly Martins, Lime's friend who has come to Vienna for a promised job,  a profession like his own. A writer. In this case, Holly writes Westerns and is referred to a 'scribbler with too much drink in him' and later by the British policeman here as a 'writer of cheap novelettes.' And of course, broke.

What Welles as Lime doesn't give in actual screen time - awesomeness itself - is the villain who his friend Holly cares about and a girlfriend who still loves him. We kind of do, too. Harry Lime hasn't grown up, life is a game and should be well played. His referring to the common people as ants in a charming way can't mask the the real horror of what he's done - diluting penicillin for profit which kills children and others. He's a charming cad, and a seducer. And, like the characters, I couldn't hate him. Rooted for him in the end to escape and crawl out of that sewer. That, to me, is what a brilliant writer does, get your empathy even for a villain. At least understand why he does what he does. 

The secondary characters, many of them trained Vienesse and British actors who you've seen in many films and with a long career, almost stole the scenes they were in...vivid and immersing. I think this film is one of the reasons I took a chance on a little idea I had and started writing.

Cara - Tuesday

Cara - Tuesday

Graham Greene and the Third Man

Years ago my friend sent me a card with a quote from Anais Nin - Writers write to experience life twice. I didn't quite get what that saying meant or how it applied to me at the time - think I'd just written my second book - but it intrigued me. So if you think of that as prefacing my relationship to Graham Greene's The Third Man film maybe it still doesn't make sense but herewith goes a feeble attempt to put down what happened to me last night. Our friends, Andi and Isabelle, French neighbors came for dinner. Think I've written about them before. But Andi is actually Austrian, Viennese who grew up in the outskirts of Paris and Isabelle is Parisian born and bred. So I had a DVD copy of The Third Man which I'm using for a workshop I'm giving next week at the SF Writers Grotto.
I love using this particular film in a mystery writing workshop to illustrate sensory details and plot points. Briefly - rubble strewn black market Vienna occupied by the Allies = status quo. Holly Martins=Joseph Cotten, hack Western writer, arrives to work for Harry Lime his best friend to discover he's dead. The Brit Major Trevor Howard tell Martins his friend Lime was a racketeer and get back on the plane and out of Vienna. To prove him wrong Martins stay (answering the call to adventure next plot point - that's only five minutes into the movie btw) Bang we're off.
 So I'd just watched the film - again which I do every year - and always discover something new in it.
Maybe I'm so mesmerized by the visuals - this black and white, rubble strewn post war Vienna, the damp cobblestones so pervasive I wear a sweater watching the film - the zither music ...anyway






 I told Andi. He begged to borrow it for a night and of course, sure.
Andi said 'that film brings my childhood back to me - every summer in the 70's, growing up, we went to stay with my grandparents in Vienna. At that time in the 70's it was still so much like the film, soot stained and some ruins. It was only in 1955 that the 4 Allied powers decamped - a full ten years of occupation. Andi waxed lyrical about the Viennese lilt in the old concierge's harangue,  'I heard that so many times, those old concierges sweeping and yelling. Those buildings yes...my Grandparents lived in the Russian sector."
Watching the film again he agreed that my new discovery, and I've seen the film many times, that Lime, the villain, ratted on his lover to stay in the Russian zone, he'd missed it too being caught up in the visuals.
Then I realized something new that the film's theme was about friendship, neither character wanted to turn in their lover or best friend and the conflict and tension was on until the last few minutes when Cotten shot Lime who's fingers in an iconic shot were reaching out of the gutter. Great fiction is conflict, conflict, conflict  and this film's got it in spades...would you turn your best friend in even if you knew he/she had done something morally reprehensible and wrong? Vienna, at that time in the world of surviving by the black market, is a character and illustrates the the grayness and ambiguity of the shades in between. That's what I'd maybe been trying to do in my book,  I think my friend was telling me.
Cara - Tuesday