The Third Man: The unquiet American

"Oh, Holly, you and I aren't heroes. The world doesn't make any heroes outside of your stories."

Holly Martins is a stumbler. That’s the best way to describe him. The pulp novelist has arrived in postwar Vienna at the behest of his friend Harry Lime. But Harry is nowhere to be found. Holly soon finds out he’s dead, run over in the street by a car.

The sensible thing would be to turn around and go back to America, but in The Third Man, the noir masterpiece by British director Carol Reed, Holly (as played by Joseph Cotten) rarely does anything smart. He’s over his head from the first moment to the film’s last iconic shot even as he attempts to piece together how and why Lime was killed. He’s held in contempt by just everyone in the movie, including Anna, the woman with whom he has fallen in love.

Maybe that’s what makes this British/American production feel so European -- the absence of an able protoganist to keep the viewer centered within the story. Beyond that, Reed insisted that it be filmed on location in bomb-ravaged Vienna, which like Berlin was divided into occupied zones following the end of the war. Rather than lend the story gravitas, the setting almost accomplishes the reverse.

Given the surrounding devastation (a third of the city was destroyed by air raids), do the machinations of Harry Lime or Holly’s desire for a woman even matter? The movie is permeated with a sense of futility—best exemplified by Anna (Alida Valli). She survived the war. Her eyes suggest she’s seen it all. Nothing seems to surprise her. Or delight her. To her, Holly is a child – or worse, a fool with a sugar-sweet crush.

“l'm just a hack writer who drinks too much and — falls in love with girls,” Holly tells her. She is unmoved.

Vienna in this film is a city of shadows, with the Soviets, the French, the British and yes, Americans all vying for influence while spying on each other. It was a world made for a conniver such as Harry Lime but an impenetrable morass for poor Holly, a town of where nothing appears to be what it seems. Reed shoots the film using a variety of canted angles, adding to Holly’s sense of dislocation, and gives it an expressionistic lighting scheme. The use of a zither in the soundtrack only enhances the sense that the familiar is being left behind.

The screenplay, by the English novelist Graham Greene, a stellar chronicler of Cold War intrigue, crackles with tension, perception and wit. But it does not attempt to be particularly subtle. Holly Martins is not just an American. He is America, stumbling around postwar Europe, filled with good intentions but finding enemies everywhere. His naïve views of good and evil have no place in a city that has seen its spirit broken.

“Leave death to the professionals,” Holly is scolded by the local British authority, Major Calloway, who later tells him that he was “born to be murdered.”¹

Holly is a writer of Westerns, but he also literally is a westerner, having come to a place like Vienna that serves as a gateway to the East. The city that once epitomized Old European glamor has been wiped away, leaving its survivors dazed and unmoored. Into this breach steps Holly with his American ideals and aw-shucks manner. The locals see him for the rube he is, and he is self-aware enough to know it, but somehow that does not deter him.

World War II was over, but American adventurism was just beginning in 1949. Having gained a foothold in European affairs, the United States would soon involve itself in land wars in Asia, first in Korea and later in Vietnam. Though the CIA, it would inject itself into political struggles across the globe. And all of it done with the same mix of cockiness and naivete possessed by Holly Martins.

As in all good noir dramas, the climax, when it comes, feels inevitable rather than a shock or a relief. I won’t spoil all of the pleasures of this great, great film — particularly one of the most famous twists in cinema history — but it remains beautiful in its stubborn refusal to depart from its gloomy worldview. Greene and the American producer David O. Selznick wanted the film to end on an upbeat note, but Reed refused. This wasn’t a story to be wrapped in a bow. A similar battle would play out 25 years later between Robert Towne and Roman Polanski in Chinatown. The directors were correct in both instances.

Roger Ebert once wrote The Third Man "is the one most completely embodies the romance of going to the movies." That is a kind of romance that Holly Martins could get behind.

WHERE CAN I WATCH IT: The Third Man is rentable on major platforms.

HEY ISN’T THAT: The actor who plays a friendly British sergeant, Paine, is Bernard Lee, best known for playing “M” in the James Bond films with Sean Connery and Roger Moore. There are other Bond connections to the film. The assistant director, Guy Hamilton, would direct four Bond movies, including Goldfinger. And both The Third Man and the 1987 Bond film The Living Daylights (our previous entry) feature scenes at the Wiener Riesenrad, the 212-foot-tall ferris wheel in Vienna.

ARMAGEDDON INDEX (4/10): The Allied bombings were probably the closest to armageddon anyone in Vienna ever wanted to come.

DUST CLOUDS: Under a unique arrangement among the four occupying powers in Austria after the war, an international zone was established at Vienna’s center that was patrolled by each power on a rotating basis. The United States ended up funnelling millions of dollars to help rebuild Austria under the Marshall Plan in a bid to keep the country from falling into the Soviet bloc. Those efforts were successful; the country was never partioned the way Germany was. But as a result, Austria stayed neutral and pledged not to join a western military alliance such as NATO.

WHAT ELSE I’M WATCHING: TV: Asura (S1, Netflix), Paradise (S1, Hulu); Movies: A Real Pain (Eisenberg, 2024), Duck You Sucker! (Leone, 1971), Conclave (Berger, 2024)

LAST ENTRY: The Living Daylights (1987)

NEXT ENTRY: 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)

1. I am reminded, however, of Louis Renault’s defense of Americans in Casablanca, certainly a cousin in spirit to The Third Man.

Major Strasser (talking about Rick Blaine): You give him credit for too much cleverness. My impression was that he's just another blundering American.

Captain Renault: We musn't underestimate American blundering. I was with them when they "blundered" into Berlin in 1918.