The Third Man the Second Time Around

I just re-watched Carol Reed’s The Third Man, a film I last saw 16 years ago and remembered mainly for its zither music and dramatic final scene. The film and I have both aged at least a little since then, and of course it’s always revealing to see how a film changes for you with repeated viewings. The first time I watched it, I think I was intent on the plot; this time, I was looking for what would stand out from an archetypal viewpoint. The setting in post-World War II Vienna, with its piles of rubble, shadowy corners, and air of disintegration, lends itself to a showdown between forces of good and evil, and that certainly figures largely in the story.

The British Film Institute voted The Third Man the greatest British film of all time, and I agree with its greatness, but I had forgotten how talky the first part of it is. Talk, talk, talk, as we are introduced to American pulp fiction writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) who has come to Vienna to meet his old friend Harry Lime to discuss a job offer—only to be greeted with news of his death. Martins conceives the idea of a cover-up when accounts of Lime’s demise don’t match up. Talk, talk, talk, some more. Despite being warned off by a British officer (Trevor Howard), Martins stays in Vienna and begins looking into Harry’s death while joining forces with Harry’s grieving lover, Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli). They seem to be the only two people who care that something untoward may have happened to Harry.

What struck me the second time around was how the film really came alive only when Harry (Orson Welles), concealed in the shadows of a doorway, is revealed to be alive. Although all of the actors in the film are wonderful, it’s as if all they’ve been doing is preparing the viewer for Harry’s return, and when light finally falls on his puckish face from an upstairs window, the action starts to move forward. Is there anyone nowadays who can match Orson Welles’ commanding presence? Nobody that I can think of. He relied on something other than good looks to draw your attention, a magnetism made up of an imposing physicality combined with an extraordinarily mobile face and an old-soul wisdom.

Major Calloway reveals to Martins that Lime had orchestrated a monstrous scheme involving doctored black market antibiotics responsible for killing and injuring many children. Although he initially refuses to believe this, Martins, now realizing Harry’s death was faked, arranges for Harry to meet him at a carnival. During this reunion, which I think is the best scene in the film, Lime reveals to Martins that not only is it true but that he has no remorse about it. He justifies his actions by telling Martins that the war itself revealed how cheap individual lives are held to be by those capable of making life and death decisions—why should it be any different for him? The two men are in a cable car looking down at the carnival from a great height when Lime admits the truth to his friend, attempting to bring him into the scheme, a moment reminiscent of Satan tempting Jesus on the mountain.

Martins finally agrees to help trap Lime and bring him to justice, which leads to an epic chase scene in the sewers beneath Vienna, a very Underworld image that is really the mirror of Vienna itself, in all its corruption. With the law finally closing in on him, Lime gives Martins one last chance to prove his friendship. The movie ends with Harry’s second and final funeral and the grieving Anna walking straight past Martins, who is smitten with her and would be much better for her than that rogue Harry Lime, but, well . . . what can you do?

The second time around, I thought the heart of the film was maybe not so much in the ultimate showdown as in the small moments, the intimacies among the characters. Harry is “wrong” for Anna, but he did her a great kindness once, and she loves him for it. There’s something tragicomic in the final scene and her single-minded march down the avenue, as if she could carry on her entire life blind to anything but her feelings for Harry. Martins, too, revealed that knowing the truth about Harry didn’t completely negate the meaning of their friendship. Far from condemning either Martins or Anna, I sort of admired their loyalty, the refusal to give up a human connection to Harry that each continued to honor, whether he “deserved it” or not. The real complexity of the film lies in the tangle of human feeling in the midst of moral collapse. It’s, ironically, in the grains of sand that Harry seems to have no use for, not the grand gestures.

Film Noir, Cars, and the Super Bowl

Sometimes January and February usher in a feeling of boredom, a letdown after all the holiday activity. Not this year. What with the Golden Globes and other awards shows, my birthday, and the Super Bowl, on top of the build-up to the Olympics, there's hardly been a minute to spare. That's what happens to mythologists trying to keep their ear to the ground without falling prey to background noise. You may have run into the same thing.

My birthday? Oh, thanks, for asking. There was an unexplained visitation from someone who appeared, despite a locked outer door, to knock on my own personal door at the same time as a scheduled but cancelled appointment that morning, but as we (or at least, I) like to say around here, whatever. I got some work accomplished and enjoyed an evening out; at or around midnight, I was eating Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie with a friend, and I call that a success.

Social media has presented its own challenges this week, on top of the usual cultural churn. I had the intriguing experience of seeing a comment I'd posted to someone else's Facebook page disappear not only from her page but also from my own activity log, as if it had never been (actually, the entire thread disappeared). I'm not sure how that happened, and neither was the page's moderator. It smacks a little of Hermes, the god of communications, commerce, and tricks -- or it could be gremlins. I'm not sure whether Mercury is in retrograde at the moment or not, so perhaps we can't blame him.

As for the Super Bowl, I actually am not a great football fan, but after hearing about the game and its commercials from others who were watching, I decided to stick my toe in the water and at least check out the advertisements. (I recognize the Super Bowl as an important cultural ritual -- I just don't enjoy football.) I didn't see all the commercials, but of the humorous ones, my favorite was the Radio Shack spot with the '80s icons clearing out the store as Loverboy wails in the background. I commend Radio Shack for its sense of humor.

And who else showed up but Bob Dylan? Weren't we just talking about him? I've not only watched his spot several times, I've also read reviews of it, including a couple from The New Yorker, which, it seems to me, royally missed the point ("Close Read" indeed). Some reviewers acknowledge Mr. Dylan's enigmatic nature but take the ad itself at face value, as a "jingoistic" (one reviewer's term) tribute to Detroit and American-built cars. On a simple reading, this might appear to be true, but I doubt that's all there is to it because, after all . . . Jingoistic? Bob Dylan? There's also the fact that, as of last month, Chrysler is wholly owned by Fiat, an Italian company, and Fiat Chrysler is soon to be tax resident in Great Britain, according to The Wall Street Journal. I thought I detected a slight British intonation in Mr. Dylan's final pronunciation of the word "car," though it could, of course, be accidental.

Wordplay finds itself traveling some interesting byways -- weren't we just talking about foreign acquisitions of American brands? With the above facts in mind, I'm wondering whether there isn't a certain amount of irony in Mr. Dylan's delivery of the Chrysler message. This is not to take away from the pride in American craftsmanship he refers to in the commercial; I judge that to be quite real enough. But taken with the film noirish darkness permeating some of the ad's scenes and the somber rendering of Mr. Dylan's "Things Have Changed" that forms the soundtrack, I sense something more complex at work.

What one reviewer took as a pastiche of typical scenes of Americana seems a bit more ambiguous to me. Someone peering through blinds at a darkened street . . . a pair of eyes seen in a rearview mirror . . . a person draped in a flag, at the ocean's edge . . . a diner customer whose smiling thanks looks a bit like a grimace . . . a rather anxious-looking baby in the arms of its mother . . . oh, look, there's Marilyn Monroe . . . a tattoo customer attempting to duplicate on her own skin the original Rosie the Riveter . . . a rather savage young woman, running wild along a ridgeline . . . a cowboy falling from a horse . . . fast traffic in a narrow tunnel, seen from two angles . . . scenes of the road (I've been out there. It does look like that.) . . . a city viewed from above . . . a partially thawed river.

And there's the finale, which features Mr. Dylan, in character as the auto spokesman, leaning on a pool table and declaring, with a group of workers behind him, that "We will build your car." One of the workers, nodding slightly, wears a big hat and bears a weird, blurry resemblance to an officiant in clerical garb as the background goes out of focus. Those scenes of baseball pitches and athletic cheerleaders might seem more innocent if it weren't for glimpses of characters and situations that seem to have strayed out of Double Indemnity, The Hustler, or The Road more than Norman Rockwell.

So while some reviewers seem dismayed at this commercial's "boosterism," which they see as shallow, I take it instead as a rather layered statement. The opening question, "What's more American than America?" Does it mean, simply, that many have imitated but none have duplicated the spirit of America? Or does it refer, more darkly, to something else? It's an open question, one I think the viewer is invited to actively consider. A commercial that makes you think? Apparently so, since viewing it merely as a simple attempt to sell cars creates some puzzling questions. It's really more like a poem, I think.