The Third Man,
directed by Carol Reed and released in 1949, is a film that has
garnered critical acclaim for its innovative cinematography and its
atmospheric portrayal of post-war Vienna. I was taken by its haunting
use of Vienna to return to the city just to hunt down the locations that
emphasise the city's war-torn visage and political complexities,
serving not just as a backdrop but as a character in its own right,
contributing significantly to the film's narrative and thematic depth.
Vienna
shown at the start of the film The Third Man and today, showing the
postwar development around the Hofburg Palace and St Stephen’s
Cathedral.
Vienna's portrayal in the film is multifaceted, reflecting the city's
historical, political, and cultural contexts in the immediate aftermath
of the war.
It's a terrific source I use in my class when teaching the
Cold War given that Vienna was divided into four zones, each controlled
by one of the Allied powers: the United States, the United Kingdom,
France, and the Soviet Union already establishing the general atmosphere of
mistrust and paranoia which captures the essence of the Cold War
era, where allegiances were uncertain, and betrayal was a constant fear.
This
division is clearly shown at the start, where the four powers are shown
here in front of the Justizpalast on Schmerlingplatz. This division is
crucial to understanding
the film's setting, as it creates a labyrinthine environment of intrigue
and ambiguity, mirroring the moral complexities of the characters. Vienna
here serves as a striking representation of a divided city in post-war
Europe, a condition that was emblematic of the Cold War's broader
division of Europe. The film's depiction of Vienna, segmented into
sectors controlled by the Allies and the Soviet Union, mirrors the
real-world division of Berlin and, by extension, the division of Europe
itself. This is akin to
the division of Berlin, where each sector reflected the culture and
policies of its occupying power.
The
portrayal of different sectors in the film further reflects the
contrasting approaches of the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. The
Western sectors are shown as relatively more open and liberal, whereas
the Soviet sector is depicted as more oppressive and rigid. For instance, when Martins crosses into the Soviet sector, there’s a noticeable change in the
atmosphere, symbolising the ideological divide.
This dichotomy mirrors the broader Cold War narrative where Western
Europe, under the Marshall Plan, embarked on a path of democratic
capitalism, while Eastern Europe, under Soviet influence, adopted a
communist system. The film is steeped in an
atmosphere of espionage, black market activities, and general mistrust,
characteristics that were pervasive throughout the Cold War era. The shadowy and uncertain environment in
post-war Vienna is reflective of the espionage battles that were a core
part of the Cold War, where both sides were deeply engaged in gathering
intelligence and countering each other's moves. The film also highlights the prevalence of black market activities,
such as the illegal penicillin trade, underlining the economic hardships
and moral ambiguities in the immediate post-war period. These
activities can be seen as a consequence of the war's devastation and the
resulting scarcities, which were also common in many parts of Europe
during the Cold War. Tony Judt wrote how the presence of the
Allied forces had a significant impact on the city's social and
political environment. The film captures this through its depiction of
the interactions between the local population and the occupying forces,
highlighting the complexities of these relationships. The presence of
the Allied forces is not just a backdrop but a critical element of the
film's narrative, influencing the characters' actions and the overall
atmosphere of the city.
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The interactions between characters from the different occupying forces
highlight the cultural and ideological clashes of the Cold War. Again, the characters representing the Western Allies and the Soviet Union
often display conflicting ideologies and values. The Western characters
generally embody more liberal and capitalist ideals, while the Soviet
characters are depicted as adhering to strict, authoritarian principles.
The film offers more nuance as Major
Calloway, a British
officer, represents the Allied perspective, often at odds with Holly
Martins, an American. This is much as I lecture my students about the
serious disagreements that took place between Churchill and Roosevelt,
the latter who seemed to delight in antagonising his allies to curry
favour with the satanic Stalin. His zone, as are the other three, shown on the right when it appears at 2:48 into the film with the entrance to schloss Belvedere. Chancellor Schuschnigg lived in an official apartment here until 1938 before his arrest by the Nazis after the anschluss.
It was also here that the signing of the State Treaty, which made Austria free of occupying powers and other sovereignty restrictions, took place on May 15, 1955 in its Marble Hall.
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These interactions, particularly in the
context of
Holly's investigation into Harry Lime’s activities, reflect the
differing attitudes and approaches of their respective countries. Lime
himself is a symbol of
moral ambiguity and the clash between capitalist opportunism and the
harsh realities of post-war life. His famous speech atop the Ferris
wheel, where he dismisses the value of individual human life, reflects a
cynical exploitation of the situation, a theme prevalent in the Cold
War's ideological battles: "Nobody thinks in terms of human beings.
Governments don't, so why should we? They talk about the people, and the
Proletariat; I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It's the same
thing. They have their five-year plan, and so have I." Meanwhile Anna, Lime's lover, is
caught between her loyalty to Lime and the reality of his criminal
activities. Her character embodies the personal and emotional conflicts
wrought by the political and ideological divide. These interactions reflect the broader ideological divide between the
West and the East during the Cold War allowing the film to explore how individuals from different cultural and
ideological backgrounds interact with each other, often resulting in misunderstandings and conflicts, symbolising the larger
cultural and political divides that characterised the Cold War era.
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At 2:30 Beethoven makes an appearance from Beethovenplatz. He's buried at the Zentralfriedhof not far from where the cemetery scenes were shot; on the right I'm standing between his and Schubert's former graves at what had been Währing cemetery, northwest of Vienna, which had been closed and eventually turned into a park in the 1920s. The gravestone itself is a replica of this one.
3.55 in showing Holly walking under a ladder as he arrives at Lime's residence, located at Josefsplatz 5. The
film's use of Vienna's actual bombed-out ruins and its labyrinthine
sewers adds a layer of authenticity that enhances the narrative. The
ruins serve as a metaphor for the moral decay and the collapse of the
old European order, whilst the sewers symbolise the hidden, murky
underworld of black market dealings and espionage. This setting reflects
the chaotic state of Europe at the time, where traditional moral
structures were undermined by the harsh realities of post-war life. Film
critic Kracauer emphasises the significance of Vienna's ruins in The
Third Man, arguing that the ruins are not merely a backdrop but an
active participant in the narrative. They represent the shattered moral
landscape of post-war Europe, where traditional values have been eroded,
leaving individuals to navigate a world of moral ambiguity. This is
evident in the film's protagonist, Holly Martins, an American writer who
finds himself lost in the complex and morally ambiguous world of
post-war Vienna. This is
evident in the film's protagonist, Holly Martins, an American writer who
finds himself lost in the complex and morally ambiguous world of
post-war Vienna.
The first appearance of the cemetery and Lime's 'grave'
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On the right Calloway confronts Holly as he invites him for a lift into town. The
memorial to field marshal Heinrich Freiherr von Hess behind me serves as
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He drove straight out of town into the suburb (British zone) where the Central Cemetery lay. One passed through the Russian zone to reach it, and a short cut through the American zone, which you couldn't mistake because of the ice-cream parlours in every street. The trams ran along the high wall of the Central Cemetery, and for a mile on the other side of the rails stretched the monumental masons and the market gardeners—an apparently endless chain of gravestones waiting for owners and wreaths waiting for mourners.
Martins had not realised the size of this huge snowbound park where he was making his last rendezvous with Lime. It was as if Harry had left a message to him, "Meet me in Hyde Park," without specifying a spot between the Achilles statue and Lancaster Gate; the avenue of graves, each avenue numbered and lettered, stretched out like the spokes of an enormous wheel; they drove for a half mile towards the west, then turned and drove a half mile north, turned south. … The snow gave the great pompous family headstones an air of grotesque comedy; a toupee of snow slipped sideways over an angelic face, a saint wore a heavy white moustache, and a shako of snow tipped at a drunken angle over the bust of a superior civil servant called Wolfgang Gottman. Even this cemetery was zoned between the powers: the Russian zone was marked by huge statues of armed men, the French by rows of anonymous wooden crosses and a torn tired tricolour flag. Then Martins remembered that Lime was a Catholic and was unlikely to be buried in the British zone for which they had been vainly searching. So back they drove through the heart of a forest where the graves lay like wolves under the trees, winking white eyes under the gloom of the evergreens.
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Kurtz
showing Holly the site of Lime's 'accident' on Josefsplatz, which is
centred around a full-sized equestrian statue and monument of Emperor
Joseph II at the base of which Kurtz and Harry’s friend “picked him up
and laid him down just about here... and this is where he died”. This is
directly in front of Lime's residence even though the film states that
the address is at Stiftgasse 15.
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Dr. Winkler's waiting room reminded Martins of an antique shop—an antique shop that specialized in religious objets d'art. There were more crucifixes than he could count, none of later date probably than the seventeenth century. There were statues in wood and ivory. There were a number of reliquaries: little bits of bone marked with saints' names and set in oval frames on a background of tin foil. If they were genuine, what an odd fate it was, Martins thought, for a portion of Saint Susanna's knuckle to come to rest in Doctor Winkler's waiting room. Even the high-backed hideous chairs looked as if they had once been sat in by cardinals. The room was stuffy, and one expected the smell of incense. In a small gold casket was a splinter of the True Cross.
Dr.
Winkel leaving from Boersegasse just at the corner with Tiefer Graben
with the Maria am Gestade Church, which will make a couple of memorable
appearances later, in the background at 42:10. At 1:14:44 both Kurtz
and Winkel will be seen together from Kurtz's window in dressing gowns implying an homosexual relationship. The portrayal of Vienna's social dynamics in The Third Man further
illustrates the city's complex post-war reality. Sociologist Bauman
highlights the film's depiction of the stark social divisions and the
sense of alienation experienced by its inhabitants. The characters in
the film, both locals and foreigners, navigate a social environment
marked by suspicion, disillusionment, and a struggle for survival. This
social landscape is a reflection of the broader societal challenges
faced by post-war Vienna, where traditional social structures had been
disrupted, and new, often precarious, social orders had emerged.
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At
42:30 Holly returns to the scene of Harry’s accident from where the
porter calls to him from an upstairs window inviting Harry to return
later that evening.
Lime's apartment is actually located at the Palais Pallavicini,owned by the noble Pallavicini family. It was previously built and owned by the Fries banking family and is therefore also known as also known as Palais Fries-Pallavicini. It was built upon a monastery erected by Elisabeth of Austria, Queen of France (widow of King Charles IX of France) and closed in 1782. The palace is considered one of the main works of the architect Johann Ferdinand Hetzendorf von Hohenberg , the builder of the Schönbrunn Gloriette. The rear part of the building facing Bräunerstrasse was also built as an apartment building. At the time, the palace had the first purely classicist house front in Vienna. Contemporaries found the façade far too simple, especially because the palace is in the immediate vicinity of the Hofburg. No façade structure was used - there wasn't even any decoration on the entrance portal which ran completely counter to the Baroque taste that was still prevalent at the time, which valued decorative centering on one point such as the entrance portal of a palace. In response to this, the entrance portal was redesigned with the sculptor Franz Anton von Zauner commissioned to add the caryatid portal I'm standing in front of here as well as several attic figures.. In 1873, the interior of the building was also redesigned in the historicist style under Margrave Alexander Pallavicini, especially the staircase with Kaiserstein steps and the banquet rooms which feature prominently in The Third Man.
Holly and Anna arrive for their meeting with Karl the porter who witnessed Harry's 'accident' only to discover Karl has been murdered before a little boy the proclaims to the locals that Holly is the murderer.
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46:30-
Returning that evening to the porter only to find him murdered, Holly
is accused by Little Hansel (48:25) who initiates a chase through the
streets of the town centre offering a series of remarkable shots of
atmospheric locations.
Little Hansel's shadow falling on the Ledererhof leading onto Am Hof. The current building was built in 1883 and redesigned in 1934 by Emil Hoppe and Otto Schönthal in the so-called New Objectivity style. On September 10, 1944, at least three bombs hit the building. First, a bomb caused the left half of the house to collapse, burying a chimney sweep. Then the part facing Färbergasse and the roof were hit. The severe vibrations also caused window and door frames to be torn out, partition walls collapsed and false ceilings buckled. Finally, on April 5, 1945, a bomb exploded directly in front of the café at the site, with the blast wave and fragments puncturing a distant water reservoir and causing further damage to the surrounding rooms. In 1948 the Ledererhof was restored with a greatly simplified façade, a reduced attic floor and a new, unremarkable roof. Today the “Zur goldenen Kugel” restaurant uses the site.
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At
48:33 Martins and Anna navigate the ruined steps past St. Ruprecht's
church on Ruprechtsplatz. The location returns at 1:34:05 for another
chase with Lime the target. Before the war destroyed it, there was an house on the steep slope north of the church.
Martins chased through the streets of Vienna, a couple shown below as they appear today.
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At
50:30 Martins finds himself an unwilling passenger in a taxi which
careens through several evocative streets such as Ulrichtplatz on the
left and Schoenlanterngasse
on the right, the latter making a later appearance during the hunt for
Lime. This scene on the right is fleeting but has the intriguing image
of a man hauling around a double bass outside its case through the
darkened streets of Vienna.
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54:57
has Martins involved in another chase, with him fleeing up the stairs
towards the Maria am Gestade church. It's these stairs, the current form
of which dates back to 1937, that has locals giving the church the
nickname Maria Stiegen. Although The Third Man only managed to be
nominated for three Academy Awards in 1950, including Best Director, and
Best Film Editing,it's no surprise that its sole Oscar was for Robert
Krasker's cinematography as scene in shots such as this. Throughout, the
use of 'Dutch angles' results in me having to tilt my photos to fit the
perspective of the scene I'm trying to recreate and, like those used in
the 1920 Robert Wiene film The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari which
is renowned for its distorted, angular set designs and tilted
compositions, which serve to convey the psychological disarray and
societal turmoil of post-World War I Germany, helps reflect the
fractured and morally ambiguous postwar Vienna, depicted as a shadowy
underworld filled with black marketeers, spies, refugees, thieves, and
foreign powers vying for control. The tilted camera angles create a
sense of unease and disorientation, reflecting the moral ambiguity and
uncertainty that permeate the narrative. Given the film explores themes
of betrayal, corruption, and shifting loyalties, and the Dutch angles
contribute to the overall sense of uncertainty and moral ambiguity.
The introduction to Harry Lime
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There is a fish head on each side of the base which serves as a
gargoyle. When designing the fountain, Schmidt used a story from a
Viennese folk tale of “The Hanake,” considered the best barber in Vienna
and whom, if anyone had a headache, it was said was the only one who
could magic away all diseases of the head by cutting his hair. He also
liked to make the inn's customers his own, especially if they suggested
he had richer wallets. When the victims left the tavern after dark, many
would stumble and hit the sharp stones of the steep alley. To make it
easier to cause such an accident, the barber had prepared a thick wooden
club, which he carefully chose to hide at the drunken man's feet with
great skill. The saying “throw a beating at someone’s feet” is said to
owe its origins to this fairy tale. When the injured man cried out, the
barber's assistant appeared quite by chance in the doorway, looked after
the poor man with compassion, helped him to his feet and led him into
her master's house. There
he was immediately treated leading to the reward until a colleague's
competitive jealousy over his successes ultimately led to his exposure.
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At 1:06:19 as Holly runs towards the door he almost gets hit by a speeding car; an impossibility given the closed location of the area as seen below. He finds Lime has fled.
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Looking the other way at the same arch seen from Am Hof as Holly enters. The cherub statue was apparently a prop constructed for the scene.
The kiosk covering the entrance to the sewers on Am Hof and the site today.
Judengasse. The anschluss began with
the purging of Jewish influence, which had been deeply ingrained in
Vienna’s cultural and intellectual spheres. Jewish academics, artists,
and intellectuals, who had contributed significantly to the city’s
vibrant cultural life, were systematically removed from their positions,
their works banned or destroyed, and many were forced to flee or were
deported. This purge extended to the physical realm as well, with the
Nazis implementing architectural changes to erase the city’s pluralistic
character and impose their austere, monumental style, reflective of
their ideological tenets. Iconic Viennese structures and public spaces
were either demolished or re-purposed to align with Nazi aesthetics,
stripping the city of its historical diversity and transforming it into a
symbol of Aryan supremacy. The reconfiguration also involved a
rigorous censorship regime, targeting literature, art, and music that
did not conform to Nazi ideals. Libraries were purged of books deemed
'un-German', and artworks by Jewish artists were either destroyed or
appropriated. The music scene in Vienna, once dominated by Jewish
composers and musicians, was silenced, with their compositions banned
from performance. This cultural cleansing was part of a broader strategy
to rewrite Vienna’s history, eradicating the contributions of its
Jewish community and other non-Aryan groups.I noticed where I stood to take the previous photo this memorial directly below me commemorating victims of the Nazis at Judengasse 5. This is not a stolpersteine; Gunter Demnig, the artist responsible for the 'stumbling blocks' found across the continent, has condemned them as plagiarism. The memorial stones shown here differ from Demnig's stumbling blocks in a number of minor ways, incuding their size, being four times larger, honour several people on each memorial stone rather than as individuals- one at Passauerplatz casually refers to the "memory of 44 Jewish women and men"- and are made by machine rather than by hand. This stone refers to Wilhelm and Sidonie Beermann, Johanna Windholz, and Malvine Fried. The first had been forcibly deported by the Nazis from Judengasse 5 to the Lodz ghetto in Poland on October 15, 1941, with his wife and daughter Zidda Hansi Windholz. They were all killed by the Nazis at Chelmno on May 10 , 1942.
1:14:44
has Martins confronting Kurtz at his home on Morzinplatz 3 demanding to
see Lime. In response Kurtz and Dr. Winkel look down from a window
shown below with how the façade appears today.In the background the rubble is of the remains of Hotel Métropole which had served as the Gestapo Headquarters after having been confiscated by Reinhard Heydrich after
the anschluss. He'd set up the Vienna State Police Headquarters here and
decreed that the building would no longer be called the Hotel
Métropole. With 900 criminal police officers and many members of the ϟϟ,
the building was the largest Gestapo office in the Greater German
Reich; the Gestapo had a total of around 18,000 officers. In 1938, the
resistance group around Karl Burian planned to blow up the
headquarters using the hotel's construction plans provided for this
purpose by the former owner Markus Friediger, but the resistance group
was arrested before the plan could be realised. Friediger was
deported from Cologne to Riga with his wife Hedwig in 1941 and murdered.
Over
five hundred people had to come into the building
every day for questioning, at the risk of being imprisoned. During the
interrogations and in the cells in the basement of the Hotel Métropole,
the prisoners were sometimes severely tortured by the Gestapo officers.
In the summer of 1938, the last Chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg, was
imprisoned here for months before he was
transferred to Munich. Schuschnigg “lived” in a room guarded in
eight-hour shifts by one guard and six sergeants at the same time, who
had to keep this duty secret- there'd been 21 men guarding Schuschnigg
alone. If a window was opened at the prisoner's request, he had to stay
in the room so that he could not be seen from the building opposite. He
also had to be accompanied by a guard to the hallway toilet; he was
allowed to shave himself under supervision. In the room next to
Schuschnigg, the wealthy banker Louis Nathaniel von Rothschild was held
prisoner under similar prison conditions for over a year and was only
released after he had given up all of his Austrian property. The
isolation of the prisoners was so rigorous that it was only after the
war that the inmates found out who was in the room next door. The first
head of the Vienna Gestapo headquarters from March 1938 to December 1944
was the Munich Criminal Police Officer and ϟϟ brigade leader Franz Josef Huber , who was also an inspector of the security police and the SD. He was replaced by the ϟϟ-Standartenführer
Rudolf Mildner. Despite their leading positions, both received only
mild punishment after the war. Until 1942 and from 1944 onwards, around a
third of the Vienna Gestapo's leadership staff consisted of Reich
Germans, with a quarter in between. The majority of the command staff
was selected from the previously “illegal Austrian National Socialists”
and adaptable police officers of the Schuschnigg regime.
On March 12,
1945, the former Métropole burned down in the heavy air raid on Vienna.
However, there are also witness statements according to which the fire
was set by the Gestapo themselves at the beginning of April 1945 in
order to destroy evidence, after relatively minor bomb damage.
After
the plan to build a memorial for the victims of the Nazis was
repeatedly delayed or failed, a memorial stone was erected and unveiled
on Morzinplatz without permission in 1951 as part of a political rally
by the concentration camp association which bore the inscription:
The Gestapo house was here. It was hell for the confessors of Austria; for many of them it was the forecourt of death. It has fallen into ruins like the 1000 year Reich. But Austria has risen again and with it our dead, the immortal victims.
In 1985, this memorial stone was replaced by the city of Vienna with the memorial that exists today designed by Leopold Grausam.
It consists of a bronze figure surrounded by eight granite blocks. The
top block bears the inscription “Never Forget” and is flanked by a red
chevron and a Jewish star. Another block bears the inscription of the
first memorial stone.
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The trap set for Lime, interrupted by the balloon seller
The police hide in wait of Lime within the Vermählungsbrunnen in
the Hoher Markt. It will be noted that Viennese policemen's uniforms
are the same as those from the Third Reich police just with merely the
swastikas removed given the police and armies had not yet been issued
any updated uniforms until well into the 1950s. Damaged by bombs in the war in 1944, the Josefsbrunnen was restored between 1950 and 1955 with the destroyed head of the statue of the Virgin Mary restored by the young sculptor Wander Bertoni, born in Codisotto, Italy. Because his father was so annoyed by the close relationship between the Catholic Church and the Italian fascist party, he refused to give any of his children a Christian first name so med his son Wander, derived from the Etruscans. In 1943, German troops brought him to Vienna, where he had to work as a forced laborer in the armaments industry. In the meantime, the sculptor Maria Biljan-Bilger hid him. After the war Bertoni began studying at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and was commissioned to carry out restoration work on bomb-damaged monuments.
Back on the Hoher Markt looking from the Vermählungsbrunnen towards Tuchlaubenstrasse at the balloon seller. Behind him is the cafe Marc Aurel created for the film. The same character had appeared in Fritz Lang's 1931 "M" and was the key agent in identifying Peter Lorre's child-killer character. Both Lorre and Welles dress similarly, and the latter too has killed children, albeit indirectly. The number and design of the balloons change, as does the length of their strings. Also odd is why he chooses to sell balloons in the middle of the night or how he manages to locate the authorities hiding during the sting when Lime himself has a commanding view of the entire area from his vantage point. Indeed, Lime is about to arrive at the cafe Marc Aurel where he will encounter both Martins and Anna before attempting his escape.
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The chase of Lime through the streets of Vienna
More security forces arrive in front of the building at Alserbachstraße 39 & 41 on the corner of Spittelauer Lände. The building is the work of architect Julius Goldschläger from 1904. Goldschläger was Jewish and died in Vienna in 1940 at the age of 68 from a cerebral embolism as a result of high blood pressure and syphilis shortly before the deportations began on November 30, 1940. He was buried at the Vienna Central Cemetery in the Jewish section. His wife Irene stayed in Vienna after her husband's death and was eventually deported to the Izbica Transit camp in 1942 where she was murdered. The couple's four children managed to escape to England in 1940. One was Kurt Theodor Goldschlager who would become Kenneth Theodor Clarke. His fascinating story is related by Jerry Klinger. After fighting with a Dutch unit across Europe, the British attached him to X-Troop with the job of hunting and capturing Nazis. After the war he returned to Britain, never to marry only to end up brutally murdered in July 1977. As he was indigent with no one to claim the body and, unaware that he was Jewish, he was buried in an unmarked grave in a Catholic cemetery in Manchester. This has now been rectified, but it leads to an ironic link back to The Third Man and Harry Lime.
The final scene at the Zentralfriedhof, one of the most devastating since City Lights. Anna won’t even look at Holly, not whilst dropping dirt in Harry’s grave, not whilst passing by the Jeep he’s standing by, not even acknowledging him standing in the road. He lights a cigarette in frustration and throws the match away...she has extinguished his flame without a word. The poetic power of silence in this closing scene is simply profound and contradicts the ending of Greene's novella.
A THAW SET IN that night, and all over Vienna the snow melted, and the ugly ruins came to light again: steel rods hanging like stalactites and rusty girders thrusting like bones through the grey slush. Burials were much simpler than they had been a week before when electric drills had been needed to break the frozen ground. It was almost as warm as a spring day when Harry Lime had his second funeral. I was glad to get him under earth again: but it had taken two men's deaths. The group by the grave was smaller now: Kurtz wasn't there, nor Winkler—only the girl and Rollo Martins and myself. And there weren't any tears.
...
I watched him striding off on his overgrown legs after the girl. He caught her up and they walked side by side. I don't think he said a word to her: it was like the end of a story. He was a very bad shot and a very bad judge of character, but he had a way with Westerns (a trick of tension) and with girls (I wouldn't know what).
By the end, Martins has shot his best friend whom he found out was a sociopath who ran an underground penicillin racket that destroyed countless men, women and children and lost Anna in the process. Throughout he comes across as the least film noirish hero- gullible, naive, clumsy, foolish. Saying the wrong thing to the wrong people, which even ends up killing people. It's not even clear why he feels the need to kill Lime given he has all but given up. Of Anna, she continues to love Lime who was happy to sell her out to the Russians to maintain his usefulness to them, fully aware of his responsibility for the deaths of children.