Review of The Third Man (1949) by Guy G — 13 Nov 2012

[A+/100] The Third Man proceeds with an air of slightly suspicious innocence (or ignorance) and jaunty legerdemain, reflected in the mesmerizing zither music that snakes along the movie's black and white ruins of post-war Vienna: bleak and worrisome, broken and seedy, but more hushed and complex than blatantly sinister.

At least, that's how Joseph Cotten's broad American protagonist, two-bit novelist Holly Martins, fumbles into things, finding himself gradually enveloped in a web of mysterious circumstances, international politics, black market crime, and the wages of emotion and ethics. Underneath it all he finds betrayal and love, and the price of betraying a love, even in the process of unmasking the criminals profiteering off the city's pain and dissolution.

This is a superb Noir thriller that transcends its genre with organic writing and fine acting by likeable left-field actors, including a very effective supporting cast. Cotten is wonderfully Everyman heroic, while Alida Valli is a ravishing microcosm of the sadness, mystery, romance, and troubled beauty underlying the sense of the whole movie. Of course, Orson Welles very strikingly and efficiently portrays one of the most enigmatic and memorable villains in cinema. The music and photography (it also garnered an Academy Award for Best Black and White Cinematography in 1950) are also rapturously indelible and delicious.

Fascinating entertainment, atmospheric, full of stark and angular fancies, shadows and fog, but also winsomely romantic and playful.