The Third Man - Fake Mourners and Lovers

I am not a religious man and always feel a little impatient with the fuss that surrounds death... As we drove away I noticed Martins never looked behind - it's nearly always the fake mourners and the fake lovers who take that last look, who wait waiving on platforms, instead of clearing quickly out, not looking back. Is it perhaps that they love themselves so much and want to keep themselves in the sight of others, even of the dead? - p.22 (Penguin Books, 1950)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCU2TdBsa2s

The Third Man - War and Cuckoo Clocks

       Don't be so gloomy...After all,
       it's not that awful. Remember what
       the fellow said...

       - in Italy, for thirty years under
       the Borgias, they had warfare,
       terror, murder, bloodshed, but they
       produced Michaelangelo - Leonardo
       Da Vinci, and the Renaissance...In
       Switzerland, they had brotherly
       love. They had five hundred years
       of democracy and peace, and what did
       that produce?...The cuckoo clock.
       So long, Holly.

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the_third_man.htm 

Click on the pic above to see the speech on YOUTUBE. 

The Third Man - Perspective

Harry Lime meets Martins at the fair ground and they enjoy an enlightening
conversation in a carriage of the ferris wheel as it climbs.                      

                      MARTINS
          Have you ever seen any of your
          victims?

                       HARRY
          Do you know, I don't ever feel
          comfortable on these sort of
          things...Victims?

He opens the door of the carriage.

                       HARRY
          Don't be melodramatic.                 
          Look down there...

LONG SHOT

from Martins' eye line of the fair ground far below and the
people now on it.

                       HARRY (O.S.)
          Would you feel any pity if one of
          those dots stopped moving forever?

                       HARRY
          If I offered you £20,000 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.

                       HARRY
          It's the only way to save money
          nowadays.

                       MARTINS
          Lot of good your money will do you
          in jail.

...

                        HARRY
          You're just a little mixed up about
          things.
          ...in general. 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.

                       MARTINS
          You used to believe in God.

                       HARRY
          I still do believe in God, old
          man... I believe in God and Mercy
          and all that... The dead are
          happier dead. They don't miss much
          here...
          ...poor devils.

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the_third_man.htm

The Third Man - Graham Greene

I remember studying The Third Man when I was about ten or eleven years old, but aside from this vague recollection, I've held on to very little. Having read a few of Greene's novels including The Quite American (pertinent when I went to Vietnam in August 2007), Brighton Rock, Monsignor Quixote, and perhaps my favourite Our Man in Havana (which I'm sure to re-read and feel obliged to blog), I was drawn to The Third Man because it was not only a short quick read but it had also become quite an important cultural artistic piece in my mind because it was also a film (1949), with Orson Welles as the enigmatic Harry Lime, set in Vienna with some stunningly hypnotic cinematography; the clatter of shoes on the rain soaked cobbled streets, the tumbling scuffle of rubble, the clunking of latches and the sliding wooden door of the ferris wheel carriage, the black and white images, - there just seems to be something rustic and deeply satisfying about this pseudo-murder-mystery film beyond just the mechanical workings of plot and narrative. And because Greene produced the screenplay, I can safely say I much preferred the film!

For anyone who's seen the film and wants to revisit one of the truelly wonderful moments in cincematic history, or anyone who doesn't intend to watch the film but is happy to cut to the chase with one of the truelly wonderful moments in cinematic history, HAVE A LOOK on YOUTUBE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-MXlqC8YeE&feature=related