The Third Man depicts post-war Vienna, Austria, a city devastated by World War II. But as visible as the physical devastation is, perhaps more important is a kind of moral devastation. The black market and the harm it causes are one example. Anna Schmidt’s cynicism and world-weary outlook are another. If you pay close attention, however, signs of corruption are almost everywhere. Talk about any you notice, and consider this film as a tale of the effect war has on a society, even after the treaties are signed.
Graham Greene, who wrote the screenplay, is widely considered one of the great novelists of the 20th century. He also served in MI-6, the British spy service. He had a cynical view of Americans, portraying them as idealists who were both dangerously naive and capable of extraordinary callousness. His most famous depiction in this vein is Alden Pyle, the title character of his novel The Quiet American, about American involvement in French Indochina (later Vietnam). That pile is the British term for hemorrhoid tells you almost all you need to know about that character. Holly Martins, the central character of this film, can be considered another dangerously naive idealist. Discuss him as a character.
While Holly Martins is the central character, the one everyone remembers from this film is Harry Lime, played by the great Orson Welles, who also wrote some of his own dialogue. Lime is the epitome of the amoral profiteer, but something about him is appealing — so appealing, in fact, that although he both begins and ends this film officially dead, he was resurrected for a radio series starring Welles for more than fifty episodes and a television series starring Michael Rennie that ran for five years. What makes Lime a character that people (including Holly Martins, Anna Schmidt, and viewers) find compelling?
The Third Man is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made, and one major reason is the cinematography by Robert Krasker. Note that the use of black and white is an artistic choice for this film; color filmstock was widely available, but it would not allow the same remarkably effective use of light and shadow. Note also the unusual camera angles, sometimes called Dutch angles, though that is misleading: they come from the type of film known as German (that is, Deutsch) Expressionism. The scene leading up to Harry Lime’s first appearance is routinely dissected in film studies courses. Analyze this or any other scene you like in detail from a cinematographic point of view (pun almost unavoidable).
Finally, the music: Carol Reed famously did not want to use the kind of music that had always indicated Vienna in movies, namely waltzes. He wasn’t sure what to use instead. Then, one night, he heard a zither-player named Anton Karas playing in a tavern, and he instantly knew he wanted zither music for the film. Karas had never written any music, but Reed flew him to London where Karas improvised for 12-14 hours per day, and then Reed refused to let him go back home until the score was finished twelve weeks later. The music was a huge hit: it sold unprecedented numbers of copies and Karas became an international celebrity, playing for the Queen of England, Emperor Hirohito of Japan, and the pope, as well as giving regular concerts. But think of the music in terms of the film. What does the music bring to it? How does it influence our sense of the mood? I suspect that if you heard the music first without seeing the film, you would need approximately ten-thousand guesses before associating it with a story of betrayal, murder, and black-market, watered-down penicillin. Why, then, does it work?