In the taxi as Holly makes his way to the lecture hall, the shots of Holly are framed by the vertical bars which separate the driver from the passenger. This evokes a sense of entrapment and naivety to the situation at hand
Holly Mocked
As Holly steps out, he looks up and out like that of a naïve optimist. Calloway recognises that he, “shouldn’t be there.” Reeds camera work, provide effective cues that highlight Holly’s deficient understanding of Vienna. He is ……… of the fact that , “everyone ought to go carefully in a city like this”
His anti-hero status is delivered through camera angles that allow us to see him from above. Holly is mocked by Reed through the lens of the Camera. Calloway criticizing his, “blundering around,” reminding him that Vienna was not Santa Fe, an allusion to his writing of Western novels adding that, “you were born to be murdered”. Martins admits to Anna he is the “dumb decoy duck’ he appears most craven and guilt ridden.
Holly is unperturbed by the two enormous statues gracing the doorway which dwarf him. His naivety is clearly established as he makes maudlin promises to avenge his friend and expunge the stain on his memory. Kurtz tries to convince Holly that, everyone in Vienna is involved in the black market, “I’ve done things that would have seemed unthinkable before the way”.
Moral Ambiguity
Film Noir techniques such as reflective surfaces, night lighting, tilted angles and the predominant shadows presents a profusion of representations that defies easy understanding. At no point is there a simple distinction of white and black to assist in a simple moral outcome. The dialogue reinforces this message, “Holly, you and I aren’t heroes; the world doesn’t make any heroes.”
The shadows, visual disorientation parallels perception and show that it is often skewed and limited. The lack of clarity of perception reflects the environment of post war angst and malaise. Alienation is evident of we a confronted visually and physically with the dark side of human nature. The close ups convey the fact that we do not have the full picture and the viewer is meant to feel the disorientation that the protagonist experiences. Facts are veiled and the protagonist finds it hard to construe a world of trickery and subterfuge. Holly can’t see the Baron as evil and is clouded in judgement.
Confusion of “heaven” and “hell” establishes moral ambiguity, difficult to tell.
Heroes
Holly’s childhood hero is gradually revealed as a racketeer exploiting the innocent and ailing free of any feeling of compunction. The traditional notion of a hero is being critiqued on a variety of levels. The charm and impishness render Harry lovable to Anna, Holly and even a cat. But, he is nonetheless a murderer. His screen charisma show the way in wish the director invited us to mistrust our perceptions. What appears to be a winning smile is a trap for the unwary. Holly gradually increases in moral stature until finally, after shooting Harry; he appears bathed in a warm light and walks steadily toward a still camera, increasing in size as he does. Reed however, stops short of a child’s hero, as he does not win over the stoic Anna. Heroics, like truth is hard to define amongst the shadows and reflections and the skewed angles that provide the audience with virtually no visual assurance during the course of the film. Loyalty to friends is questioned.
Holly adopts the archetypal role of a western cowboy which in his blundering and comical way, is rendered inadequate in the setting. He initially fails to see the convoluted world outside his black and white novels. He is inexplicable the flawed hero, who although receives a stinging rejection from Anna, attains moral stature by realising the stark difference between the real cruel world and his wild west novelettes.
Holly growth
We are left with the memory of the dots viewed from Ferris wheel and the sense that history renders all things temporary. Repudiation of alter egos that are destructive is a necessary precondition for a better world but guarantees nothing. Between personal grief, suffering and the universal good lies in an individual’s choices. His authoritative walk bathed in light signifies a new moral understanding and maturity. His journey from, “happy as a lark” is rendered through his appearance near a train again, this time with the smoke not covering his face but wafting behind him. He now acknowledges the wider social implications. We have established Holly as an uncomplicated fellow, fond of drink and girls. Although he is initially presenting as a blundering fool, he has a deep-seating sense of decency and integrity that finally overrides his weaker traits. Being the nostalgic and sentimental type, Holly places great store on the past on things he and Harry got up to together, but only when Calloway confronts him with the reality of Limes’ atrocities does he see beyond the myth making.
Holly continually has to vacillate between serving moral duty and a personal loyalty. Only when the acerbic Calloway reveals him to the reality of Limes atrocities, does he consent to be the “dumb decoy duck”
Limes initial grip over Martins is symbolically rendered through the zither, which play Harry’s theme. The zither, plucked by invisible fingers is a visual parallel into the way Holly Martins is himself being played like a musical instrument. Harry Lime amid his boyish charm and seductive smile is finally disclosed to be the cynical racketeer with his nihilistic outlook on life. The new extreme close-ups of Holly result in a revelation and power. As Holly comes face to face with Harry on the Ferris wheel, it is symbolically, the last ride of his childhood.
Introduction
Director Carol Reed sets a fable of moral corruption in a world of visual complexity. It is set in Vienna, far removed from the wistful elegance of its, “Strauss” era and embedded with decadence and corruption. Greene’s story plays skilfully with the historical context and morality. The use of a city occupied by Allies creates a constant notion of chaos. At the heart of the film, one finds the theme of betrayal whether in love, friendship or moral conduct. Vienna appears as a character on her own, a kind of wounded monster that corrupts people but preserves her beauty with dignity. The city partly in ruins lends itself perfectly to a noir novel and especially to the sublime black and white photography. Each image skilfully plays with contrast and angles to create an idea of deformity and beauty, Vienna thus being used as a metaphor for the character of Harry Lime. Vienna is a politically disputed territory which enacts the moral disputation that the film shows.
Harry Lime
Lime is identified through his cat, on one hand it lets the wily viewer realise the contradiction that a man who causally causes death and madness amongst children, having an affectionate relationship with a small animal. He is aplomb and calm in the face of tragedy, blatantly disregarding the, “suckers and mugs” which fall victim to his racket.
The murderous fluency of his Machiavellian story of the cuckoo clock is contrasted with his wild desperation as he flounders in the sewer. What makes Lime so malicious is his manipulation of the people he loves and the evident irony he sees in his own decisions and actions. He is neither maniacal nor irrational, merely supremely selfish. Harry escapes into the sewer system like a cornered rat and Reed edits the pursuit into long, echoing empty sewer vistas and close-ups of Limes sweaty face, his eyes darting for a way out.
He is amusing, affable and seductive but has no love for anyone other than himself. Harry’s cynical outlook is fully revealed when he tells, “In these days, old man, no on thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don’t, so why should we”
Alter Ego
He is corrupt and arrogant but there is reason to suggest that He and holly are aspects of one dimension as they grew up together, and Anna often confuses their names.
Martins admires Lime, Anna inadvertently calls Martins, “Harry”, a clue indicating that they may have intended them to be alter-egos. Lime presents something Martins has aspired to be, “he could fix anything,” from a blunderer, awkward and naïve, into a man of confidence of suavity and sophistication He “always made things seem more fun”
Calloway
A mechanistic, methodical man, he is only determined to catch Harry at all costs
Childhood motif
There are visual reminders of childhood, as this is how Harry and Holly’s relationship started. Whilst Holly questions the porter about Limes death, a rubber ball bounces into the room, followed by Hansel. The boy acts as a reminder to Holly of the dangerous world he is mixing up in. Later in the film, the viewer is spared from seeing the resultant horrors of Lime’s penicillin racket; instead the camera centres on a teddy bear. The choice of a fairground as a meeting point for Holly and Lime also reminds us of the children of Vienna as we see an empty carousel. Here visual metaphor would seem to allude to betrayed or lost innocence; that of Limes as a child and of Holly’s as he discovers his friend’s darker side and the children who died.
Film Suggestiveness
So much of the filmic brilliance lies in what is suggested rather than what is shown. We are shown in the “mugs” scene Martins expression as he walks along a row of hospital beds, we are shown the nurses dispensing care, but neither see nor hear a single child. It is as if their lives their lives, reduced to zero are too tenuous to make their presence felt. The teddy bear is glimpsed again at the end of the scene, as it is dumped by a nurse into a box, a symbol of one more murdered child and all the broken young lives. The teddy bear brings home the truth that major Callaway manipulates sentiment, to persuade Martins to help him. At the great Wheel above Vienna, Martins asked Harry if he had seen any of his victims to which he replies, “don’t be melodramatic” and points out the dots on the ground. The teddy-bear counterbalances the dots. It comes to represent not just the victims of Harry’s evil, but our humanity and out ability to feel.
As Holly meets Baron Kurtz, the side lighting places a shadow on Baron’s face suggesting his duplicity. “I sold some tires on the black market. I wonder what my father would have said”. The transition at the end of the scene links the baron to the crime scene such subliminally shows where he stands morally. “Suppose you dig up something, well discreditable to Harry” There is irony as policemen walks between them suggesting the tension between law and lawlessness that pervades the film. When Holly presses Porter to tell the police, he says, “It’s not my business” or social responsibility. The cluttered shots, angles, intense music and framing of all the characters all convey Holly’s disorientation. The sharp contrast between light and shadow, incorporates stylistics of film noir in the lighting and non-linear nature of the staircase. Anna says, “sometimes he said I laughed too much,” is ironic because she no longer laughs.
The third man is a visual masterpiece with effective mis-en-scène and a haunting musical score which plays with the morality of the text. Unusually reckless tilted camera angles and wide angle lens amidst the shadowy Vienna cast a sombre moods over the fable of post-war ambiguity and ambivalent redemption. The deliberately unsettling tilted angles reflect the state of the ruined and dark city. The low key lighting, deep shadows and dimly-lit streets all aspects of film noir; establish the amorality or the dark side of human nature. It is through these film techniques that we are guided through to know what is moral and amoral via a cinematic visual style with a unique look.
Camera stuff
Through the contents of the image and resources of montage the cinema has at its disposal a while a whole arsenal of means whereby ti impose its interpretation of an event on a spectator. Visual technique is used to convey the narrative of the film. This is achieved through the structure of the shot, mise en scène and the montage.
Reeds prowls through the wet night streets, giving us strange and disorientated angles so that familiar takes on a sinister aspect.
The two old friends are torn asunder, between the dark and the light
Zither
Zither tells the store without a visual track. We know that Harry stands in between Holly and Anna’s private encounters as his music intrudes thematically.
Kurtz/Mistrust perception
Baron Kurtz who appears to aspire more to the, “old Vienna before the war” is associated with a small dog. The fact that we see the dog at Winkel’s house and that he doesn’t mention this arouses the viewers suspicion that the witnesses to Lime’s death may be in some way working together.
Kurtz, an aristocrat who plays the violin in the Casanova club, is a shabby individual who wears yesterday’s charm and elegance. The dog is a link to the co-conspirators.
Dr Winkle, a clean fastidious man with an impressive collection of religious icons and crucifixes is a demonstration of religious hypocrisy. Kurtz holds Holly’s fiction while creating a diction of his own.
Innocence and Experience
The Third Man specifically pinpoints the American innocence. Holly Martins arrives breezily in a bomb-shattered Vienna with no knowledge or experience of foreign parts. And almost immediately finds himself up against a wall of police bureaucracy, lies and general evasiveness. In this context, innocence reveals itself in the form of ignorance or arrogance. When drunken, Holly is angered in the face of unpleasant facts being pointed out to him by Calloway, a world-weary man devoid of illusions, as if he doesn’t want to know about it. At the outset, he is not equipped to take on the deceptions and ambiguities that conceal the truth about Harry. Innocence like Holly’s is born to be exploited. Lime is his exact opposite, cunning, callous, manipulative, and supremely self-assured and the quintessential sociopath. He is a man without a conscience, the epitome of experience in the darkest, most devious sense of the world. Part of the films meaning is that Holly can only succeed in setting things right by sloughing off his innocence and becoming more like Harry. Anna Schmidt presents another face of innocence and thoroughly, a helpless one. For her, there is no world outside Harry Lime which he realises only too well.
Loyalty/Betrayal
Loyalty is represented through Anna, and at first through Holly, as little more than foolishness and gullibility in the Third Man. At the Great Wheel Holly is astounded at Harry’s blatant disregard for Anna, “What can I do old man? I’m dead aren’t I?” It is perfectly clear in this exchange that Harry Lime only ever is concerned with himself, a truth Holly realises, “You don’t care a damn about her, do you?. All Holly’s childhood illusions about Harry have been dissipated, along with his feelings of loyalty shown with his agreement to be the, “…dumb decoy duck.”
Decadence
Vienna itself is a metaphor for decadence and corruption, scarred from post-war much of it lies in ruins. We are informed that the City “with it’s Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm,” now is the house of hideous criminals, zones and displayed persons and black marketeers. The first shots are of contraband goods changing hands, a body floating in the Danube and bomb sites. This establishes a strong visual sense of physical degeneration. Vienna is presented as a city of faded gentility, ersatz standard. The hotel Martins stays also bears the stamp of old-world class gone downhill. The exterior shots of Vienna are mainly at night displaying dark, sinister streets, grotesque faces caught briefly in car headlights, deserted rain-slicked squares where men disappear in a puff of smoke, shouting German voices and the hint of a lynch mod. Harry Lime scuttling over bomb-sites the echoing of indistinct voices, the gunfire reverberating in the sewers. It is a labyrinth of shadows and unseen menace and the overall dramatic effect is greatly enhanced by the stark photographic style, ideally suited to the black and white medium, titled camera, crazy angles and sudden stabbings of harsh light.
The third man plays skilfully with the historical context and morality through the use of Vienna as a setting for the text. It also demonstrates a sense of discordance and a lack of communication; mirroring the failure of most of the occupants to abide by the law. It is a city sector divided among geo-political lines, with red tape, police, displayed persons and black marketeers. The use of a city occupied with allies creates a constant notion of chaos. It is a politically disputed territory, a fitting metaphor for the morally disputed territory that is the subject of the film
Anna
Anna, a women to be reckoned with never strays from the path of her ‘moral duty’ unlike Holly. She forever remains faithful to Lime despite the atrocities he commits. This is rendered through her walk down the same tree-laden cemetery path at the beginning and at the conclusion of the movie, concluding that Holly is a betrayer and the Harry is “still a part of [her]” Blinded by her love and loyalty to Harry, she places the personal before the social good and abides by the law written on her own heart. and. Anna’s stage performance as a vivacious flirt contrasts sharply with the real woman, “what difference does it make, he’s dead isn’t he”/ The contrast between Anna and the comedy role she plays is symbolic of Vienna. The josefstadt theatre and the light but opulent play being performed is an example of what the narrator earlier derides as the, “old Vienna” with “it’s glamour and easy charm”. Anna removes the wig of the light hearted flirt to reveal a complex, troubles woman. In the same way, Vienna is stripped of it’s façade to reveal something different underneath. Anna is very much at home in Harry’s apartment, in a symbolic gesture, she removes a happy photograph of herself, showing that the carefree Anna is dead along with Harry. The scene is divided into two threads, the conversation between Holly and the Porter and Anna’s nostalgic look at Harry’s apartment. Reed’s nourish-tilted camera, low shot angles, tight close ups and harsh lightings of their faces add menace to conversation. Harry’s beautiful apartment shows how survived the war unscathed while Anna must take Holly up a debris scattered staircase to her apartment.
Anna is a true victim of the environment, is blind to corruptness and we sympathise for her, the poignancy of her comment, “I laugh too much” elicits our sympathy for her. She is continually surrounded by authority demonstrating her palpable sense of being entrapped. There is a real sense of Anna’s world being precarious. The doltish hack writer who, “drinks too much and falls in love with girls,” has hopelessly fallen in unrequited love with the melancholy Anna, but she is unresponsive to his clumsy advances, “there isn’t enough for two laughs.” Anna view- Calloway is framed by the oblique lines, skewed for Anna’s view of him indicating some distortion in her perception do to her blindness to Harry’s actions
Narrative Structure
The location shooting which retains its authenticity and documentary impact become distorted with irony when the fiction is played against it. In other words, we see the real Vienna, but also an unreal view of the real Vienna. Visually, there is a definite counterpoint pattern between outdoors and indoors, between light and dark, between the use of German and English and between h e use of Anton Kara’ zither music and the use of distorted diagonal camera angles and finally between what the sound track tells us and what the visual track shows us which often sets up a series of false expectations.
Location shooting (outdoors) are usually night shots with expressionistic chiaroscuro (highly contrasted blacks and whites) lighting, lurking silhouettes, mysterious shadows and half lit faces. The two funeral scenes stand out thematically but casually in that they employ flat, daylight grisaille lighting (emphasis on greys). If these shots are level, from eye level, there is often expansions of reductions in image size. We see Anna in the concluding sequence, first in the extreme long shot and finally in the extreme close-up. High angled shorts and extremely low angled shots (Holly looking at porter in window; Holly looking out of Anna’s window into the street). These contrasts in images size or angle of vision are structure to denote visually, feelings of psychic distant or intimacy and feelings of superiority or inferiority.
Since dialogue is less frequent in outdoor shots, than in the indoor shots, the zither music is more frequent outdoors and becomes the dialogue of outdoors. It is very stylized and tells a story where the visual track may not. We know Harry Lime is still alive before we see him as we repeatedly hear his theme, which has been established from the outset in the opening funeral scene. We know he stands between Holly and Anna because his theme cuts into their supposedly private encounters. The zither themes may denote the impending arrival of Harry even when he is unseen. This demonstrates the counterpoint between the image track and the sound track. The film establishes a narrative structure that a book cannot deliver. There is a dialogue between the film and spectator which the characters do no fear.
The zither music, is restricted in the indoor shots, so that if it does enter, it intrudes thematically. By contrast, dialogue thrives in these indoor shots, in part to compensate for the lack of movement in the frame. The camera is usually set up lower than waist level (Hansel) so that it is tilted up at the characters. There are many scenes in which some characters sit while others stand. Standing denotes a position of suggested threat of superiority. Pain (physical strength) stands while holly sits. Popescu stands while Holly leans and Anna sits and Anna (moral strength) stands while Holly leans or sits in the café. When Holly sits, he often drinks, and is thus, most vulnerable and most susceptible to suggestion or to danger. We know Holly is always being offered “deals” or being invited to combat while seated, by the many visible objects offered to him (Kurtz, saccharine, Popescu, cigarettes) The contrast between strength and vulnerability is magnified in these indoor shots by use of distorted angles (Holly gives lecture) both he and the audience (the camera is positioned behind audience) are seen at a slant. This create a vertical dialogue between the film and the spectator, a dialogue not shared by the characters in the film.
The contrast between light (security/stability/order) and darl (mystery/suspense/danger) in these shots creates many psychologically real and imaginary or false expectations. Each time Holly sits, we know he is weakened, but the weakness is psychic. Each time Holly goes outdoors, we sense impending danger because they have set us such expectations or automatic reflexes in the film for the spectator. Reed interweaves real and imaginary danger, the sleek black car going at breakneck speed with a partition between Holly and the driver, a sinister looking driver who pays no attention to Holly’s protests. When the car stops, we realise we have been tricked. The comic cloak and dagger is always a prelude to the real. Popescu warns Holly of the dangers in mixing fact with fiction, presenting a very real threat of abduction. Holly escapes to a dark room, parrot, real threats of violence remain just threats.
The use of German adds authenticity . It creates identification as we identify with Holly for he is the only character who can’t speak the language. German use creates a suspense by creating an interdependency between the image track and the sound track. Suspense I heightened since we must wait with Holly for translation of the German.
The contradiction between what we see and what we hear are evident. This counterpoint occurs in the Prater Wheel; we hear Harry Lime tell Holly that Anna’s a “good kid” and that Holly should take care of her, while what we see is Harry’s finger drawing the name of Anna encircled by a heart with Cupids’ arrow on the window pane. Thus, Harry verbally professes indifference at the same time that he visually affirms his strong feelings for Anna.
Film Techniques.
Night scenes and dark and dingy streets emphasises shadows and bleak prospects. Film commences with a long shot of the city and a pervasive bleakness reinforced by the voice over. Montage of shots, what is established as city whose romantic past is in the process of obliteration by its corrupt present.
Hollies unshakable loyalty to Lime proves ill-founded built on the innocence of his childhood friendship. The episode is really just an extension of their adolescent schooldays together, with Harry calling the shots and Holly, the faithful lieutenant falling obligingly into line as the pasty.
