monday, january 07, 2008
The Third Man
Carol Reed’s noir classic The Third Man is a masterpiece of the genre. It’s a film that comes laden with a half-century of admiration, fan exegesis and a legion of movies that have been inspired by its brilliance.All of which makes viewing the film for the first time a somewhat intimidating affair but - ironically - it's a film that meets you on your own terms. Possibly because the message it carries is one that still resonates as strongly today as it did when the film was first made.
What struck me most forcefully having watched it recently was how unfettered the writer, famed British novelist Graham Greene, was in trotting out his favorite subject – faith and its place in the modern world. Where things become really interesting is in how director Carol Reed then takes this idea and unfolds it in every aspect of the film.
Basically, the pressing question is “who is the third man?” And, once you allow yourself to step back a step and look at that query beyond the confines of the plot it’s essentially a question about God. Or, specifically, what use is faith in a world seemingly abandoned by God?
Of course being introduced to the protagonist, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton), as he steps penniless off a train there is little to suspect this kind of heady introspection is to follow.
He’s the archetype of a sadly still common stripe of American expatriate - blundering about with his nationalistic sense of self-confidence and assured his standing in the world puts him above the dealings of others.
It’s a detached façade which he seems to have perfected given his role as an author of cheap pulp fiction. And it seems to presuppose his casual atheism, he still goes through the motions of his faith but there’s little evidence he really believes it. So when the crisis of faith comes, he isn’t suspecting it and – most likely – doesn’t even recognize it for what it is until far too late.
When his erstwhile benefactor turns up dead he’s got little else to do but wander aimlessly around the ruins of the city asking questions nobody wants to answer and not understanding what he’s being told anyway. It’s an arrogance of ignorance but that’s enough to qualify as hubris in the end.
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Over and over in the film the characters are buffeted about by forces they neither understand nor can perceive the origin of. Something invisible is at work moving them to its own designs but they have no proof of it, they can only see the effects of its actions.
Eventually, as events start to overtake him, Martins breaks his lethargy and starts looking for the source of it all – he starts searching for meaning behind everything that is happening around him - or, if you will, God. And it proves remarkably difficult to track down. There might be a good reason for that since the aspect of God winding his way through the modern world is, in fact, the "Third Man" theologically speaking.
With God the Father tucked safely away in the hoary domain of the Old Testament and the Son conveniently ascended back up to the celestial realm the only aspect of the deity left hanging around the wreckage left by World War II is the third aspect of the trio - the Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit).
The Holy Ghost is a tricky one to nail down in the best of times. He reportedly dwells inside each of us, the aspect of God within us all, yet also is the mechanism by which one can be led to one’s faith and, therefore, salvation. You have to look inward to find what is beyond you. More on that in a second.
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It does more than simply unnerve the viewer in moments of suspense, they show the twisting labyrinth of ethics and morals which shift as each new bit of information is revealed.
The disconcerting visual look of the film is Reed’s own distinctive brand of noir but the wordplay and irony is vibrantly Greene’s (as well as a good bit of the humor). The masterstroke is the Anton Karas’s score – which winds through the film sometimes whimsical, sometimes tragic, but saturating the drama with its haunting melodies.
It’s all a twisted mirror image of Casablanca. All the tropes are in evidence; a tragic love triangle, the oddly fey companion, a weary inspector lurking at the fringes and, most importantly, a disputed passport inevitably driving the players forward despite themselves. It's just been drained completely of romanticism by the horrors of a war and the atrocities that came with it.
And, in both films, the men keep running in circles looking for their own brands of meaning, it’s the woman that keeps the thing going - Martins falling inevitably in love with a woman who still loves a man who doesn’t love her.
But, as has been noted, Casablanca may represent the hope of the war effort but The Third Man embodies the cynical weariness of a world devastated by the same conflict. In the former film, a passport provides a passage to a better place, here the all-important document is ripped up and thrown disdainfully on a bar unused.
Even if God is gone and waiting for him is a fools errand, faith is still necessary. Sure, you might end up waiting interminably for Godot but you still have to find a way to live with your fellow man while you do.
Martins has the tattered shell of a faith, believing in God because he is supposed to but without a foundation of belief to ground it. He makes the decision to help another for what he thinks is selfless reasons but is really just to assuage his own guilt. His final decision to act is with the knowledge it’s the right thing to do but not because he feels any compulsion to act in an ethical manner.
Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) is the one man who has faith and believes in truth, if not actually in God. He knows his place in the world and works in the confines of his moral background to do what is right. While the men around him are following a protocol they don’t understand anymore, he’s notable for his directness of purpose. He’s an antiquated figure who still holds power – but only within his own sphere and is unable to act beyond it. Something Lime knows well and uses to his advantage.
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(Welles' sheer charisma in the role was a bit of a revelation for me and it reveals his casting as a bit of genius no matter how much of a prima donna he proved to be during filming. The film would have collapsed if you didn't find yourself just liking Lime despite every bit of evidence telling you otherwise.)
Martins has enough insight to recognize that his friend’s view of the world has jettisoned God altogether, but Lime denies it.
“Oh, I still do believe in God, old man. I believe in God and Mercy and all that. But the dead are happier dead. They don't miss much here, poor devils.”
Lime is a man without morals who fits quite well in a world without God. And when he faces his own mortality in the chilling crescendo of the film he reaches up out of the sewer for a salvation he had so casually dismissed before.
God is not within him and, thus, unattainable without. But it isn't his lack of faith in God that damns him, it is his lack of faith - of empathy even - in humanity itself. So while his fingers stretch through the grates of the sewer reaching for the heavens and, instead, just barely touching the tawdry world he looked down upon with disdain before.
more: 52 films 26 books | Movies
| comment posted by: John Wayne on april 17, 2008 @ 4:48 pm |
Best review yet, but if I was honest with myself, I would say I liked Clooney's "The Good German" better. |
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