Tilting the Void

Last night I finally watched The Third Man. I don't know how I can claim to be a devoted fan of Graham Greene and not have seen it, but there you are.

The film is the essence of film noir, in every way. I confess to not knowing that Greene wrote the novella with the movie in mind; would that all movies could be so well written, directed and acted. The cast was flawless, the dialog realistic; each shot is composed almost like a beautiful, dark illustration. The scene is a crumbling post-war Vienna filled with shiny, dark cobblestones and shattered old buildings. Rats creep in the periphery. There is even a chase through Vienna's sewers--can't get more noir than that, really.

Greene excelled at portraying characters in both moral conflict and decrepitude. You aren't sure at the end that you really want the villain--and he is a villain--his cavalier black marketing of compromised penicillin has caused the deaths and debilitation of innocents--to die, though he must die. Of that, there is no question. Harry Lime is simply charming, even when bluntly revealing his inherent sociopathic nature:

You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't be melodramatic. [gestures to people far below] Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays.

It might sound trite, but I've actually heard people I know offer up the same flawed argument in casual conversation. In my mind the question itself is meaningless and somewhat rhetorical; the asker seldom understands exactly how much of themselves they reveal in simply asking it.

It's the detail that really makes the movie wonderful--the city itself, the obscenely labyrinthine sewers, the cute-but- monstrous little boy who cheerfully tries to blame someone (incorrectly) for murder, the hopelessness and hunger of the citizens, the naive good nature of the American that gradually turns to grief and weary understanding. Nothing is cut-and-dried. One could see even then why other nations found (and find) Americans so distasteful; we're like some big, rich, athletic kid convinced of our own noblesse oblige, that we can fix any problem--that we should fix any problem--that underneath it all, we're the superhero and savior, and that good, our good, will always win out in the end. It's a national dismorphia Greene addresses quite well and with devastating accuracy in The Quiet American and to some lesser degree in The Third Man--which, like all his so-called 'entertainments', has much more going on beneath the dark, grimy surface than mere atmosphere and action.