See Noir at Its Best: Style and Shadows in the Vienna of The Third Man

The nighttime streets are dark and shadowy, elegant in rubble and 19th century buildings. Cobblestones glisten in the light from street lamps. Carol Reed’s 1949 film, The Third Man, shows us a visually stunning Vienna, a masterpiece of the noir realm, and probably one of the greatest films of all time.

The black-and-white film is a thriller, starring Joseph Cotten, Trevor Howard, Alida Valli, and, of course, Orson Welles as the elusive Harry Lime. Welles only appears in the last third of the film, but steals the show and becomes the lead…although not the hero. He’s one of those evil but charismatic characters, whose 21st century counterparts are Tony Soprano, Walter White (“Breaking Bad”) and yes, Don Draper (”Mad Men”).

Graham Greene wrote the screenplay for The Third Man after visiting Vienna, finding it atmospheric, and meeting a man in a bar who told him a story about a crime similar to Harry Lime’s. Greene wrote a novella as a source text—and then turned it into the screenplay. The story takes place in Vienna, soon after the end of World War II. Wartime rubble is everywhere. The city is divided into four zones by the Allies—the British, French, Americans and Russians. Some scenes were actually filmed in London, when Welles refused to go back to Vienna for filming.

The film opens with the arrival in Vienna of an American writer of western pulp fiction, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton), who has come because his childhood friend, Harry Lime, promised him a job and a room. Martins learns that Lime died a few days earlier after being hit by a speeding car on the street. Martins meets a British officer at the cemetery and also sees an intriguing woman (Anna Schmidt, played by Valli). He begins to think the facts of Lime’s death are suspicious and demands that the officer (Lt. Calloway, played by Trevor Howard) investigate. Calloway tries to get Martins to leave Vienna but Martins stays, meets (and falls in love with) Anna and tries to learn what happened to Harry. Martins eventually learns more about Lime from Calloway, including crimes Lime has committed. In one of the film’s famous scenes (with an essential cat), Martins discovers that Lime is still alive. The Ferris wheel scene and the iconic chase through Vienna’s sewers cap off the film.

The other characters in The Third Man are key to the noir nature of the film. Baron Kurtz (a weaselly character played by Ernst Deutsch), Harry’s doctor, Dr. Winkel (Erich Ponto) and of course, the mysterious Mr. Popescu (Siegfried Breuer) are strong hints that all is not as it seems in Vienna.

The expressionistic cinematography in The Third Man makes Vienna another character in the film. Robert Krasker, the cinematographer, used wide-angle lenses and skewed framing so that exteriors seem off balance. Nighttime chase scenes through the streets and rubble of Vienna are simply gorgeous in their noir shadows, always suggesting danger is just around the next caryatid. Late in the film, Martins goes to visit someone in the Soviet zone and behind him, you see workers on the pile of rubble that used to be the Gestapo headquarters in Vienna.

The musical composition, “The Third Man Theme,” performed on the zither by Anton Karas, is heard throughout the film, sometimes sad, sometimes jaunty or jangly, sometimes melodramatic, but always a key element. The song became famous separately from the film and topped the music charts in 1950, making Karas famous.

The final scene, where Holly waits for Anna at the side of a road and she walks toward him, past him and out of the scene without looking at him, is shot with a very wide angle, making for a long and suspenseful tracking shot.

Two elements of Vienna take on extreme importance in the film. The complex sewer system below the streets where the final chase takes place is dark and wet with many twists and turns. You don’t have to use your imagination to know how it smells. The wiener riesenrad or giant Ferris wheel (212 feet tall) near the entrance to the Prater amusement park is where Martin and Lime finally meet. The famous scene in the cab of the Ferris wheel was filmed at Shepperton Studios in London, where the cab (and some of the sewer system) were reconstructed. When Martins and Lime get off the Ferris wheel, Lime makes his famous “cuckoo clock” speech, comparing Italy and Switzerland.

Possibly as a way to increase the feeling of misdirection throughout the film, people are called by the wrong names. Anna calls Holly Harry several times. Holly calls Calloway Callahan. (“I’m English, not Irish.”) Holly mispronounces Dr. Winkel’s name (“It’s Vinkel.”)

If you can find them, there are two documentaries about the film. Who Was the Third Man? is a 30-minute film made by the city of Vienna in 2000 with interviews with cast and crew. Shadowing “The Third Man” (2005), is a 90-minute story of the making of the film.

The Third Man is being screened this week at the Music Box Theatre as part of the Noir Across the Atlantic series. You can find it streaming on YouTube or Amazon Prime for $3.99.

This review was previously published in Third Coast Review. Image courtesy Music Box Theatre.

Movies, glorious movies: CIFF and a Jarmusch duo

October is Chicago International Film Festival month with its glorious menu of 140 films from 50 countries, most of which I wanted to see. However, life intrudes and so I measure out my life in coffee spoons, seeing eight or ten or twelve of them.

Jim Jarmusch. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

On top of that, I’m thrilled to see that Jim Jarmusch, one of my favorite film directors, has two new films out now. One of them is Paterson–a beautiful film about a busdriver/poet. That was a special feature of CIFF. In addition, his new music documentary, Gimme Danger, about Iggy Pop and the Stooges, was just released.  So first of all, a Jarmusch recap.

Paterson

I have always loved the cool and quirky plots and characters in Jarmusch films, as in Stranger Than Paradise, Down by Law and Mystery Train, three of his early films. But some of his recent films–including Paterson–are a little different. Paterson, written and directed by Jarmusch, is set in Paterson, New Jersey, and it’s the name of the leading character, the bus driver/poet, played superbly by Adam Driver. The city of Paterson is also a character; we become acquainted with it as Paterson walks to work and drives his bus route around the old industrial city. And we learn about some of Paterson’s famous local heroes, including the poet William Carlos Williams.

Our Paterson stops for lunch and writes poetry in his notebook at the magnificent Great Falls of the Passaic River. As he writes, we hear him read the lines and see them scrawled on screen in handwriting. The poetry scenes are very moving. His wife, charmingly played by Golshifteh Farahani, is an artist and artisan who turns everything into a black-and-white work of art, from cupcakes for his lunch to shower curtains and garments. Nothing much happens in Paterson. It’s a celebration of the small details of life and work.

Gimme Danger

This is the first Jarmusch documentary I’ve seen and it’s masterful. We meet Jim Osterberg, aka Iggy Pop, as an older, wry, self-reflective guy who meanders fondly through his childhood, growing up in Ann Arbor, and his punk rock past. Between the MC5 and the Stooges, the Detroit area was considered the epicenter of punk rock in the 1970s. The Iggy interviews are the main thread of the film, but it’s laced with elements of the script scrawled on the screen (like Paterson’s poems) plus animated scenes that recreate some of the adventures Iggy describes. (The use of animation is similar to what is done in Two Trains Runnin’, which I’ll describe below.) Great editing and massive amounts of great concert footage where we see Iggy perform, always shirtless and dervishlike. He tells how he invented and perfected the stage dive. Gimme Danger is well done and will be a treat for any ’70s rock and punk rock fans. As we watched the credits roll, my friend and I were in awe of the hundreds of clearances that Jarmusch’s lawyer had to obtain for the intellectual property, people and locations used.

These are the highlights of the other films I saw during CIFF. Watch for them. Most of them will appear in Chicago theaters in the next few months.

Sieranevada

This is a Romanian film, directed by Cristii Puiu, and takes place almost entirely in a dark, crowded apartment in Bucharest, where a family celebrates the life of the deceased patriarch. The apartment has many rooms, opening on to a dark, central hall.  People go in and out, doors open and close, conversations start and stop, in a realistic way throughout the three-hour film, which feels as if it’s filmed in real time. Various secrets emerge of family members’ pasts and the family tries to deal with the day. The film’s title does not have anything specific to do with the film or with anything in film history.

Two Trains Runnin’

This is a road documentary, directed by Sam Pollard, about two efforts in 1963-64 Mississippi. One is the freedom riders movement and the effort to register voters in Mississippi, which ended in violence and tragedy. The other is the search by two separate teams for a couple of old-time delta blues performers–Son House and Skip James. The film’s structure and storyline are straightforward, but the use of animation to show scenes where footage is not available is a nice touch. The addition of blues renditions by modern artists like Gary Clark Jr. adds a lot to the film, as does the narration by Common. The 82-minute film hasn’t been released yet. Pollard said in the Q&A following the film that he’s looking for a distributor. And yes, Pollard acknowledges that the title is the same as the title of an August Wilson play.

Un + Une

This is a French film, mostly set in India, directed by Claude Lelouch snd starring Jean Dujardin (you’ll remember him from The Artist). He plays a famous film composer who goes to India to score a Bollywood adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Un + Une is a film about relationships broken and made and has a funky spiritual aura. The film is a spin on Lelouch’s 1966 film, Un Homme et Une Femme, also shown at the festival in a restored version. Un + Une is a lovely bit of romantic fluff with an edge of poignancy.

Elle

This French film directed by Paul Verhoeven stars the magnificent actor Isabelle Huppert, who often plays women in dicey situations (as in Ma Mere and The Piano Teacher). Her performance here is fine as the highly sexualized business executive, but this was a troubling film with some violent scenes of sexual assault. Not easy to watch at times.

American Anarchist

This interesting documentary, directed by Charlie Siskel, is the story of William Powell, the man who wrote and published The Anarchist Cookbook at the age of 19 in 1970. Although Powell says the book is distributed without any effort on his part, it’s still used today by radicals and terrorists because of its detailed instructions on how to make bombs or how to turn a shotgun into a grenade launcher. Siskel interviews Powell, who was 65 at the time of the interviews and died in July just before the film’s release. Powell, rather disingenuously, denies any culpability for how the book has been used, says he doesn’t own a copy and hasn’t read it in years.

My Journey through French Cinema

This is a loving film memoir of director Bernard Tavernier’s career in the French film industry. In a beautifully edited film montage, he recalls the actors and directors he worked with and describes and analyzes their work and his experiences working with them. This three-hour documentary may not have a very wide release, but it’s a must for all lovers of the grand French cinema of the 20th century.

Miss Hokusai

Finally, I have to write about this beautiful Japanese anime film that’s not part of the film festival. It’s set in 19th century Edo, before the city was named Tokyo. It’s an historical film, adapted from a manga series, about the daughter of a famous artist. The plot is kind of episodic and there’s not very much character development, but the film is beautifully drawn and every aspect of it is perfect, including the sound. Spoken in Japanese with subtitles. The film is running this week at the Gene Siskel Film Center.