A Very Orson Welles Christmas: The Third Man (Dir Carol Reed, 1h46m, 1949)

Vienna. 1949. Four years after the Second World War. Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), an author of dime store westerns, is searching for his childhood friend. Harry Lime (Orson Welles); his reported death, in  an occupied city, is suspicious, and linked to a black market racket for adulterated penicillin. Worse, at least for Martins, things have become complicated between him and Lime's girlfriend, Anna (Alida Valli). Wandering the city after meeting her, he is stirred from his reverie by a cat's meow-Anna's cat. Someone, stood in the shadows, is watching him. Drunk, Martins calls out to his would-be pursuer, and, roused by the noise, a light comes on. Illuminated, brought from the shadows, Orson Welles looks up. Looks towards Cotten. Looks up again, as the owner of the light remonstrates with Martins. 

Robert Krasker, who will win an Oscar for his Expressionist cinematography, pulls in on Welles. And Orson Welles smiles, as Anton Karas' score, that career-making strummed zither, strikes up the theme that will change Karas' fortunes and make him an international star. The light goes out, Welles is once again in darkness and by the time that Martins has crossed the quiet Vienna street, Harry Lime has disappeared, back into the shadows and backstreets of the wartorn city. Orson Welles has finally arrived in The Third Man.  

Vienna. 1948. Graham Greene, the English novellist is in the Austrian city divided into four Allied sectors; for the past decade he has admired the film maker Carol Reed; first championing him in the pages of The Spectator, where Greene described Reed's first film, Midshipman Easy (1935), as having "more sense of the cinema than most veteran British directors", and, finally meeting Reed at a party, introduced by Alexander Korda, who would produce The Third Man, the two agree to collaborate on a film. The result was The Fallen Idol, based on a Greene short story, in which the son of a French ambassador in London becomes ensnared in a murder and a case of mistaken identity. Reed and Greene would be nominated for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay respectively at the 1950 Oscars.

Now Greene is in Vienna researching for his next film with Reed; Greene will meet with Elizabeth Montagu, who will show him, and later Welles, the seedier and less legal nightclubs of the war-torn and divided city, and introduce him to The Times' correspondent in the city, Peter Smolka, later unmasked as a Soviet agent, who will introduce Greene to the city's thriving black markets.These travels in Austria will form the centre of The Third Man, It is important to note, despite suggestions in the intervening decades to the contrary, that Welles had little to do with the writing or directing of the film, although the influence of The Lady from Shanghai and Citizen Kane can be seen in the film's staging, and Welles' performance as Lime is as much down to Welles as Reed.

Vienna. 1949 .Holly Martins has arrived, primarily to give a lecture of the British Council, who are under the impression Martins is an eminent American writer. Reed (at least in the English cut), introduces this divided city, squabbled over by the victorious allies who have cut the city in four, between the British, Russians, Americans and French, from the point of view of the vultures who prey upon its residents, the black marketeers. There is much of the documentarian in Reed's shooting of the film, often using real bombed out buildings that loom into the night sky. Lime's death is further complicated by its witnesses' disagreeements; here, Greene, Reed and Krasker take us on a whistlestop tour of the city, introducing soldiers in the British sector (Trevor Howard, star of Brief Encounter (1945) & Bernard Lee, later to play James Bond's M), previously on the trail of Lime, before we are introduced to his friends and aquantiances in the form of "Baron" Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch), who claims to have been one of two men who helped the dying Lime, whilst Lime's housekeeper claims to have seen three.

Caught up in this mystery is Lime's girlfriend, Anna, who works as an actress. Almost all of these figures, the Baron included, warn Martins away from his attempts to uncover the truth about the death of his friend, whilst many of them are impoverished, the Baron having to moonlight as a violinist to make ends meet, whilst Anna subsists partly on things thrown onto the stage. Worse, as Lime's housekeeper turns up dead, suspicion starts to turn to Martins, a supenseful sequence taking place among the ruins following a confrontation at the British Council in the British sector, that sees the bomb damaged, gothic ruins of a war-torn Vienna loom above these tiny figures as Martins finally escapes from them. It is here that Welles enters the film. It is here that all that tension building over the first half of the film is released in Lime's iconic appearance, to be replaced by something far more unsettling, and far more dangerous.

Harry Lime is, after all, one of the classic villains of noir cinema, an entirely amoral black marketeer and murderer who haunts through the city he has afflicted; Welles imbues him with a boyish charm-Orson is, after all, only thirty-three, but this mask soon slips. The Ferris Wheel scene is not just Greene's writing at its best-it is he that created the famous "Swiss Cuckoo Clock" observation, but maybe Welles' best performance on screen, an almost unbearable tension growing as Lime, matter of factly, turns to Martins, asking him "Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?" Lime is a man without a conscience, driven by his amorality, his lack of feeling for the people his tainted insulin have killed, even before Howard's Major Calloway reveals the full nature, and consequences of, Lime's crimes. That all this menace is suggested at by the mere action of Welles opening the door to the cabin of the Ferris Wheel, to look out across Vienna, this implication rather than show of violence is as much a credit to Welles' acting ability as the impeccable editing of Oswald Hafenrichter.

Yet it is also a glimpse of Lime as a man rather than a metaphor; as the hunt for Lime implicates Anna, and Lime and Martins' friendship, this leads, inevitably, to its infamous denoument in the chase in the sewers of Vienna. These vulnerabilities, these cracks in the mask of Harry Lime, become obvious, leading to its villain being chased in its beautifully cut, superbly taut finale. Certainly, the charisma of the character was such that Welles would play the character for nearly two years in a British radio serial acting as prequel, and Lime remains indellibly linked with Welles. Moreover, it is he that is arguably The Third Man's protagonist-Karas' theme only strikes up when Welles is on screen, everyone in the film seems obsessed, from British soldiers to Austrian actresses to Hungarian crooks with Lime, whilst the film is bookended by the spectre of Lime, arriving, and departing, into shadow.

Lime, and The Third Man still haunt Vienna: a museum now stands in the city, barely half an hour walk from the doorway of 8 Schreyvogelgasse where Welles first made his appearance, whilst the sewers that became the backdrop to the finale (though much of the finale was in fact shot in London) remains a popular tourist trap. Lime still haunts Welles' career; it remains his most famous role, and arguably his best. In the year it turned 75, The Third Man remains one of the single greatest films of the Post-War era, a nigh-perfect melding of noir and thriller, a maze of shadow, lies and deception, at the centre of which stands the now immortal Harry Lime

Rating: Must See (Personal Recommendation).

The Third Man is available via streaming on Apple TV, and on DVD and BluRay from Warner Bros Home Entertainment.

Next week we join Orson Welles for one final time as we consider his 1950s border noir, Touch of Evil.