COMING OUT OF THE SHADOWS: THE THIRD MAN (PART 1)

The first time you see THE THIRD MAN (1949) by director Carol Reed, you’re tempted to believe that you discovered it and no one else knows how fantastically good it is.  But smarter, better-informed people than you and me are already in the know.

Mamoun Hassan, international film educator and former head of the British Film Institute, taught a Masterclass at the International Film School in Cuba earlier this year, citing the best directors of British cinema and urging greater awareness for Carol Reed:

“You will have heard of David Lean because he has his champions – one of them a very famous champion: Steven Spielberg.  You will have heard of Michael Powell and [Emeric] Pressburger, [they have] a champion and that is Martin Scorsese.  And Hitchcock…doesn’t need any champions because … most directors want to make a Hitchcockian film.  He’s constantly being re-examined so the filmmakers are keeping him in the public eye.  That leaves Carol Reed.  Most of you don’t know Carol Reed…He needs his champions.”

Director Peter Bogdanovich, in the introduction to the Criterion Collection release of THE THIRD MAN, conjectured on what holds back popular perception of Reed:

“Carol Reed is one of those underrated directors who was highly thought of during this lifetime, but since he passed away, nobody much talks about him.  Probably because the last few films he made were not among his best, even though they were among his most successful. “

My own belief is that Carol Reed is difficult to rip off.  His work in THE THIRD MAN is so specific, and yet, you can’t easily recreate it.  He makes David Lean, Powell and Pressburger, and Hitchcock — all of them brilliant craftsmen and endlessly skilled— seem overtly cribable.  Lean is your man for landscapes; Powell and Pressburger give you storybook-like drama in saturated colors; Hitchcock is a master of suspense.  Carol Reed, however, said he tried not to repeat himself with his films and thus avoided set categories for his style:  “I don’t think a director should stand out…The audience should be unconscious that the damned thing’s been directed at all.”

[PLEASE NOTE:  SPOILERS AHEAD.  I will keep it to a minimum, but there’s no way to avoid everything.]

The more I summarize the story of THE THIRD MAN, the less you actually need.  It’s better to watch it yourself.  Still, it’s useful enough to tell you this much: an American named Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives in post-WW2 Vienna to reconnect with his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to find that Harry may be involved in some treachery.  To complicate matters, Martins also falls for Harry’s girl, Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli).

There is a sense from the very beginning that this story is something of a lark.  The zither music underscoring the opening credits is largely responsible for that.  It sounds like we’re about to embark on a musical comedy, not a film noir of disreputable criminals and ill-fated protagonists (which is what THE THIRD MAN really is).  The film’s opening also employs a voiceover narration to introduce Vienna and the multiple foreign powers controlling it.  The narrator (never identified in the film, though it’s actually Carol Reed himself) seemingly then digresses from generalities to tell us about Holly Martins who arrives “happy as a lark and without a cent”.  The impression is that we’re in for an amusing story, one that can be told over drinks at the pub.

For a while, it is fun to play detective with Holly Martins who’s trying to find out the real state of affairs involving his pal Harry Lime.  There are interviews with shady characters, mysterious deaths and disappearances, chases down wet, cobblestoned streets at night, and time spent trying to prove an irritatingly self-assured British major (Trevor Howard) wrong.   But you’ll find yourself thinking of the old warning given by supervising adults to children: it’s all fun and games, until someone gets hurt. 

Martins certainly comes up against the hard truth, but the tone of the film remains a very intriguing thing.  Anton Karas continues to play zither music, but not the jaunty, cheerful theme of the opening credits.  The music quivers, instead, with embarrassment and resignation as Holly Martins faces the truth and his impotence to make things better.  The irony of his life is probably amusing to outsiders, but for him, it’s humiliating and disillusioning.

The cosmic joke of Martins’ life is also paralleled in Carol Reed’s depiction of Vienna. The city is not a place where dreams come true — rather, it’s here that they come to be torn away by rough reality.  Vienna provides a circus-variety of faces and characters.  The porter at Harry Lime’s apartment building charmingly stumbles with his English but reveals deadly details to Martins that the police don’t know about; an adorable chubby-cheeked toddler persists in pointing Martins out as a murderer; and an impossibly-old man attempts to sell balloons to the police during a tense stakeout.  At one point, there’s even a uniformed man walking around with a Hitler mustache.

This carnival nightmare atmosphere is essential to Carol Reed’s genius.  A serious game is being played, but the protagonists lose their bearings and maneuver clumsily.  Reed famously uses crooked (dutch) camera angles to show how off-kilter things are.  In one particular scene (reminiscent of one in Hitchcock’s THE 39 STEPS), Holly Martins must give a talk about being a writer.  It’s a nightmare scenario for any writer to be put on the spot and made to justify themselves in front of a strange audience.  It’s made worse for Martins because he’s trying to make sense of a crime and one of the criminals is questioning him.  Reed duly films Joseph Cotten at a cocked angle.

Irreverent black humor is worked into the dialogue, throughout the film.  Holly Martins is taken aback by the British manner of speaking about death:  “Is that what you say to people after death?  ‘Goodness, that’s awkward?’ ”  And later, when Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) wants Martins safely out of the way, he says, “I don’t want another murder in this case and you were born to be murdered.” 

This brand of humor works because of the world writer Graham Greene created with this story and others in his oeuvre — the cloak and dagger, the ironies, the self doubt, the would-be and aborted romances, and perhaps most importantly, being too clever for your own good.  Other directors got a fair approximation of Graham’s virtuosity, but Carol Reed is the director who nailed it and got the best mileage.  Just prior to THE THIRD MAN, Green and Reed successfully collaborated on THE FALLEN IDOL (1948), but it’s THE THIRD MAN that creates the greatest frisson in the imagination.

There’s no doubt that Carol Reed set a standard that influenced other filmmakers.  Next time, I’d like to talk about several films that demonstrate some of the flair for irony, criminality, humor, and a sense of place so indelibly immortalized by THE THIRD MAN.

###

Sources:

Mamoun Hassan website:

http://moviemasterclass.wordpress.com/reviews-2/

February 2013 – Introduction to The Third Man Masterclass

(International Film School, Cuba)

http://vimeo.com/61082788

DVD:

“The Third Man” [2-Disc Edition], Criterion Collection, 2007.

Book:

Drazin, Charles, In Search of The Third Man, Limelight Editions, 1999.

FILM NOIR: A PERVERSE VALENTINE

I want to write about THE THIRD MAN next time, but we should have a little discussion about film noir first.

Film noir is a French phrase to describe the cynical, tough-talking crime films of the 1940s and 50s.  It literally translates to “dark film”, meaning that America was churning out stories that didn’t have the happy endings made so glossy and artificially satisfying by the Hollywood studios.

The dark stories were born out of the rise of urban living in the 20^th century.  People came with the hope of making it big in the city, even though the odds were stacked up against them everywhere.  Every person and every thing represented a racket working against you — the government, the cops, the crooks, your boss, your spouse, and your so-called friends.  They squeezed money, love, blood, sweat and tears out of you and left you bitter and on the skids.

The “Czar of Noir” Eddie Muller writes in his book DARK CITY that “…film noirs were the only movies that offered bracing respite from sugarcoated dogma, Hollywood-style.  They weren’t trying to lull you or sell you or reassure you — they insisted that you wake up to the reality of a corrupt world.”

The cynicism and brutal truths intensified after World War 2, when men returned from the virtual hell of fighting to the now surreal normalities of the home front.  Surviving the Depression and the war changed men and women and had them scrabbling to redefine their roles in life.  It would be a disillusioning transformation.

In a great lecture a couple of years ago (August 18, 2011 to be exact), the aforementioned Muller interviewed author Dennis Lehane at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco.  Muller described film noir as “working class tragedy”.  Lehane noted that “in noir, [people] fall from the curb” and not from great heights.  Both are brilliant observations I wish I’d come up with myself.

However, my earliest personal take on film noir was this:  the whole genre was a beautifully perverse valentine to Humphrey Bogart.  Bogart was a man’s man, but he wasn’t John Wayne in stature or handsome like Cary Grant.  Instead, Bogart had a receding hairline requiring a toupee, spoke with a lisp, and always looked dog-years-older than his actual age.  He spent the first decade of his career in gangster films and getting shot down in the last reel.  These were ignoble deaths with no one left to regret his demise.

Things finally turned around for Bogart with starring roles in HIGH SIERRA and THE MALTESE FALCON (both released in 1941).  He was playing another gangster-type in HIGH SIERRA, but his portrayal of Roy Earle was excitingly nuanced and even sympathetic.  Earle wanted enough money to retire and get out of the crime racket and a nice girl to settle down with, but life just wouldn’t let him have it.  These themes would fuel nearly every film noir to come.  Bogart comes to a punishing finish in HIGH SIERRA, but unlike his earlier films, he had a love interest (Ida Lupino) and the audience lamenting his failure.

THE MALTESE FALCON is often regarded as the first bona fide film noir.  Dashiell Hammett’s original novel had been adapted twice for the screen, before they got it right with Bogart, directed by John Huston (who had written the screenplay for HIGH SIERRA).  Bogart’s casual cool as detective Sam Spade just barely reigns in the volatile and ruthless man underneath.  It’s a stunning balance of tempers and Bogart’s performance is a revelation.

Humphrey Bogart faces off with Mary Astor in THE MALTESE FALCON (1941).

A pattern was established with THE MALTESE FALCON that became the DNA for the noir genre — the motley cast of characters; danger lurking in shadows; a twisty plot driven by competing motivations; a wicked, world-wise sense of humor; and indelible style in clothes and manner.  What would noir be without men in the fedoras, veiled women, and cigarettes burning?  When his client Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) flutters with a school-girl manner, Spade calls her out: “You’re good. Chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get in your voice…”  

Even the supporting characters have their bits of business.  Punctilious dandy Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) must have his gardenia-scented calling cards and walking stick.  As Kasper Gutman, Sydney Greenstreet radiates flair with a booming laugh and a penchant for “talking with men who love to talk.”

What sets film noir apart from the tradition of gangster and crime films before it is debatable.  For me, these are the deciding earmarks:

1)  The aspect of horror. 

There’s something grotesque in the protagonist’s pursuits and something stalking him in the dark, ready to pounce savagely. 

In THE MALTESE FALCON, Spade is involved a woman he can’t trust and pursuing a treasure that kills everyone who comes in contact with it. 

And vividly, in the carny noir classic, NIGHTMARE ALLEY (1947), Tyrone Power is a smooth-talking con artist who climbs his way to the top, only to fall to the depths of becoming the alcoholic and half-mad sideshow attraction known as “The Geek”.

2)  The nemesis. 

The worst enemies are the ones closest to our main character, including the protagonist himself/herself.  And in the final moments, a lover or best friend can be the one who fires the fatal bullet.  In noir, it’s important that reckoning is delivered before the cops get there. 

This is beautifully played out in another quintessential noir classic OUT OF THE PAST (1947) starring Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum.  Greer plays one of the all-time, doe-eyed femme fatales who ensnares Mitchum, only to be betrayed by him and drawn into her own spectacular crash.

Killer best friends are at the core of THE THIRD MAN which we’ll go into next time.   

3)  Confusion. 

By the end of a noir film, we find ourselves re-examining and questioning the outcome. What could’ve happened to make things different for the characters?  How did we the audience get here?  Is life really that desperately bad?  A conventional crime story would end with less ambiguity.  Transgressors must be punished by the law or the cops, and there are no alternative outcomes.

In Billy Wilder’s noir masterpiece, DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), Fred MacMurray’s character narrates how the whole crazy, complicated story came to be.  Even as the active protagonist of the film, he needs to think it all over and attempt to make sense of it.  He got suckered into murder for the love (or rather the lust) of a woman.  Not just any woman, but a knockout Barbara Stanwyck. 

This leads me to another assertion — Barbara Stanwyck is the other reason why film noir exists.  It’s a genre honoring her as much as it does Bogart.  Throughout the 1930s, Stanwyck churned out films featuring tough dames who knew the score.  She worked with directors like Frank Capra and William Wellman who understood and captured her ferocious tenacity and blazing intelligence.  But the resolutions of those dramas in the 1930s imposed happy endings or punished her as a moral necessity.  Stanwyck needed film noir to fulfill what she started.

Barbara Stanwyck gives Fred MacMurray an eyeful in DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944).

Watching DOUBLE INDEMNITY, you can see Stanwyck manipulating Fred MacMurray with a turn of her body, enigmatically masking her emotions behind sunglasses, or staring calmly ahead during the murder that she carefully plotted with MacMurray.  She doesn’t ever have to break a sweat.  He’s doing all the heavy lifting and she’s getting exactly what she wants.

Stanwyck’s beauty tricks in DOUBLE INDEMNITY are resurrected in film noir culture over and over — the overdone styling of her hair; the heavy lipstick; those tarty heels that MacMurray sees tripping down the stairs, seducing him; and the little outfits alternating between tight sweaters and luscious glamour.  As smart and clever as he is, MacMurray still can’t save himself from this siren.

Film noir is about these driven women who outsmart their men.  It’s about men who don’t look like matinee idols.  It’s a world you have to talk your way in and out of.  You have to understand the cosmic joke, the cosmic irony of life.  Danger is right at your hip like a gun, and shooting yourself in the foot is inevitable.  Having the gun taken away and used against you is also par for the course.  Nearly every noir film is a tribute to Bogart and Stanwyck in some way.  See for yourselves.  Audiences of the 1940s and 50s never got over them and neither will you.

ON THE RISE

“Yes,” I said, “I am a rising character: once an old lady’s companion,

then a nursery-governess, now a school teacher.” 

— Excerpt from Charlotte Brontë’s novel, VILLETTE

Bronte’s heroine Lucy Snowe declares herself to be a rising character, one who has risen from humble beginnings and on a path that is perhaps unforeseen by others.  Her assertion is, indeed, valiant and worthy of our admiration.

This blog will spotlight the best stories driven by rising characters, whether in literature or film, onscreen and off. 

Consider that one of the best cinematic experiences is French director Abel Gance’s NAPOLEON.  It is a silent film that is over five hours in length and rarely seen because it requires three screens for its spectacular finale.  There are three pivotal rising characters attached to this film — Abel Gance for his visionary and passionate filmmaking, Napoleon Bonaparte as portrayed by Albert Dieudonné (surely one of the most awkwardly sexy and yet dynamic figures ever), and historian Kevin Brownlow who has literally spent his lifetime piecing the film together, after it was artistically mangled to pieces (in the interest of distribution and commercial appeal) following its initial debut.

Albert Dieudonné leads the way as NAPOLEON (1927).

Consider why Jane Austen’s novels and their screen adaptations strike such a chord with audiences.  Austen was a spinster living in relative isolation, but she also possessed an unstoppable genius.  Her heroines create a standard by which we judge our hearts and our place in the world.  They are perhaps defined by money and social position, but have none of the superficiality of modern life (this means you Reality TV; and you Social Media) that obscures true feelings and their best selves.

Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen lift our hearts 

in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (2005).

Consider Mr. Fredricksen and Russell in UP.  Literally, they are both on the rise, when a house is held aloft and transported to South America via helium balloons.  Fredricksen is an elderly man, widowed, and completely on the outs with active society.  The authorities even order him to a retirement home.  Russell is essentially an orphaned boy, coping with the absence of his father (perpetually away on business) and his birth mother.  This isn’t just another odd-couple-road picture, starring an outrageous comedian and a bona fide leading actor.  UP is about an old man and a Japanese American boy scout.  You might ask why mentioning Russell’s ethnicity is important.  It isn’t, but, then again, when was the last time you saw an Asian American in a leading part in a major release?  UP may be animated, but it’s also an Oscar winner that is easily recognized by millions of people.

Russell and Mr. Fredricksen get carried away in UP (2009).

We should all consider ourselves rising characters.  Because life is hard.  Man, is it hard.  Be a hero to yourself and to other people.  See the world as much as you can in person.  And when you can’t, then see the world through the lens of the stories that are told.  Some of those stories will break your heart, but they are transformative.  They reach beyond boundaries and speak to our humanity.  Don’t wait to be told; don’t wait to be served.  Belly up to the table and bring your curiosity and your heart.  They will serve you well.