- I've seen Carol Reed's The Third Man a few times before, and my most recent viewing got me thinking about spoilers. Has anyone seen this film in the past fifty years without knowing in advance that Harry Lime (Orson Welles) would turn out to be alive? It's surely one of the most widely-known twists in all of classic cinema, right up there with the true identity of "Rosebud" and Marion Crane's fate at the Bates Motel. What I noticed this time around, though, was that my foreknowledge and anticipation of Lime's famous emergence from the shadows actually helped me to get through the slower parts of the film. As Harry's dedicated friend Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) notes, Harry's mere presence "just made everything seem like such fun."
- Before Harry shows up, however, the film's first two-thirds consist entirely of Holly bumbling his way through postwar Vienna on a haphazard investigation of Lime's apparent death. He has a few run-ins with the English quarter's Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) and the unfailingly polite Sgt. Paine (Bernard Lee), both of whom are interested in the late Mr. Lime's illicit black market dealings. The mysterious Baron Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch) and the Romanian Popescu (Siegfriend Breuer) claim to have been the last two men to see Lime alive, although an honest porter (Paul Hörbiger) mentions an elusive "third man" he spotted on the night Lime died. Dr. Winkel (Erich Ponto), Lime's physician, also happened to be on hand that night to confirm that Lime was dead. As Holly notes, it's as though there were "no strangers there" on the evening of Lime's alleged demise.
- It doesn't take long for Holly to track down Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli), an actress who was seeing Lime up until his death. Schmidt is the one person in all of Vienna who tells Holly the complete truth about Harry, at least as far as she understands it. Sure, Harry was involved in some smuggling and even arranged for Anna's forged passport, but she hasn't allowed any rumors about Harry to corrupt her loving memories of the man. Still, it's obvious that both she and Holly are a little worried about Major Calloway's tales of Harry's black market penicillin killing and maiming children. And then, from out of the shadows, steps Harry himself. In one of cinema's most famous reveals, a light shines across the supposedly dead man's face as he spies on Holly and Anna from an alleyway. In an instant, Holly's quest transforms from solving a murder mystery to a different type of investigation entirely.
- It's easy to forget that Harry really only has one speaking scene in The Third Man, but what a scene it is. Initially, one might reasonably interpret Harry's insistence on boarding the Wiener Riesenrad (Vienna's famed Ferris wheel) as an attempt to converse without being overheard. Gradually, however, it dawns on both Holly and the audience that Harry is contemplating pushing Holly from the gondola, a plan that is only abandoned after Harry discovers that the police are already onto him. In short, Harry isn't quite the friend Holly and Anna made him out to be. Instead, he is a completely unethical monster who views humanity from a great height, even when he isn't atop a Ferris wheel. The most famous part of this scene arrives back on the ground with Harry's famous "cuckoo clock" speech, but it's his description of people as "dots" to be killed for money that reveals even more about his moral character, or lack thereof.
- Of course, in retrospect, The Third Man's many crooked angles, misidentifications, and mistakes should have tipped us off that something was amiss. After all, there's a reason that the local promoter of high culture (Wilfrid Hyde-White) misidentifies Holly, a writer of pulp Westerns, as a famous literary sophisticate. Likewise, there are hidden clues lurking in Sgt. Paine's errant rhinoceros slide and the constant swapping of character names, such as Harry for Holly or Callahan for Calloway. And perhaps the greatest indictor of confused turmoil is Vienna itself, which has been reduced from a city of Mozart and museums to a bombed-out pile of rubble. Why else would a film noir that traffics in murder and rat-infested sewers be peppered with whimsical zither music? One could even argue that these constant subtle warnings spoil the film's big reveal just as much as finding out in advance that Harry is still alive. But I would argue that such spoiling actually helps the film, enabling its audience to sit back and soak in Robert Krasker's amazing cinematography, the outstanding acting by the entire cast, and the wonderful location filming while eagerly awaiting Harry's dramatic arrival. Not to mention his eventual departure.
- Written by Grahame Greene.
- Alida Valli's full name is Baroness Alida Maria Laura Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg.
