THE THIRD MAN
(1948)
Sir Carol Reed (Director)

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THE QUESTION OF STRUCTURE IN ART

There are many kinds of definitions. None of them come from some divinity nor are they carved in stone. Some definitions deal with usage – that is to say the way in which people use a word in ordinary speech. Other definitions may be operational – that is to say they are made in order to clarify some point or to delimit some specific area under discussion Sometimes these two types of definition are at odds with one another. In general usage, “myth” often means something that isn’t true (“Oh that’s just a myth”) while in a technical or operational sense “myth” means a story believed to be true and sacred!

In dealing with a concept like “art” it may be necessary to make a definition in order to decide just what will and will not be included. One approach to developing “questions” is to define the terms and then regard them as part of a process of some sort. This is common in many of the social sciences.

In analysis of art (whatever it may be) the method is not experimental the way it is in science. Some people have held that analysis is much closer to communication theory This approach regards art as something which communicates but not necessarily verbally.

If we conclude that art communication, then we need to understand the “language” in order to understand what it says. In effect each kind of art is akin to being a different language with a different vocabulary and grammar. To understand painting, sculpture, music. And other art forms, we must discover the “language” of each of these forms. Film, like there others (in this theory) has its own language hence the title of the course “The Language of Film”

There remains however a problem about the “translatability” of any form of communicationi into any other. It is said that the famous modern dancer/choreographer Martha Graham once performed one of her dances. After the performance, a friend came back and said “Oh Martha, it was wonderful! What does it mean?” Graham is supposed to have answered “If I could tell you what it meant I wouldn’t have to dance it would I?” In effect, Graham was arguing that the medium of communication was integrally tied to the message. Maybe the medium wasn’t the message, but it certainly had a lot to do with it!

In that sense, the question about translating from one form of art to another is parallel to the problems of translating from one language to another. Consider the following Christian Morgensterm line:

Was für ein Baum ist ein Purzelbaum?

I suggest two translations:

(a) What kind of a tree is a somersault?
(b) What kind of a condiment is a somersault?

The first is fairly accurate but loses the punch of the pun. “Baum” (tree) occurs both as the word “Baum” here, but also as the end piece of the word for somersault, “Purzelbaum”

By translating “Baum” as “condiment” the exactness of the translation is gone (I do not believe it would be wise in general to translate “Baum” as “condiment”!), but the spirit of the pun is maintained.

ART AND TECHNIQUE – ART AND CRAFT

One can argue that without the technique necessary to control the medium in which one works, art is not possible. This implies that are is a rather conscious effort on the part of artists to produce something which exists in their heads. To argue otherwise might, in effect be arguing that a pianist who can not hit the correct notes for a piece of music is a great artist because of their musicality, despite the fact that their technique is so flawed they can not hit the right notes. Arguments about such things are legion.

Similar arguments have been made that technique without artistic input (whatever that may be) is craft, rather than art. Where the line is drawn between a technically excellent pot – a craft work, and a pot that has “crossed the line” and become art is hard to say. After WWII the American military was intent on destroying Japanese swords, but through the intervention of the American Provost marshal, many of the swords were classified as art, and not just craft.

For the purposes of this course you need only produce well crafted papers, they need not be artistic!

Narrative structure: The idea of trajectory, arc - to climax (Greek for staircase)

Graham Greene wrote story as treatment for film

Tension – something to be created in the audience

Generating emotion is one of the things art often does. How is it done. Lots of variation both by individual directors and also culturally.

Information

The audience needs to be given information. The writer decides what information is given out, who gives the information out, when they give the information and to whom they given the information.

Notice that the Austrians talk to each other n the phone in English when the audience needs to know the information and no one is there to translate!

Narrative structure;

Who tells the story? Who is the narrator in this versioni

Photography

Watch the kinds of shots done here. Is there a reason for the shots being the way they are

Bit parts always interesting faces and so on. Person who invites Holly to talk

Use of extras – very interesting characters – woman at restaurant eating, people at “lecture”

THE FILM

The Third Man
1948

Trufault’s Auteur theory contested here. The Third Man. is very much a writer’s film.

Carol Reed (man) is famous director

Many squabbles about who directed the film – Reed or Welles, but it is clearly a Reed film. Reed was shooting before Welles arrived. Welles’s often “bigger than life characters and bigger than life performances” are often “over the top” and rather performance more of theater than film. This may be his best acting performance.

Acting scenes between Welles and Cotton are very much with overlapping dialog typical of Welles.

Three crews: Day Night and Sewer – Reed oversaw all of it. Night and Sewer were busiest.

Reed had made shots of Vienna but never used them because he felt: EVERY SHOT SHOULD SERVE NARRATIVE PURPOSE

The idea also exists that the film should be told visually – i.e. without dialog. Old dictum – can you turn off the sound and still follow the film?

Watch the use of language in the film.

AFTER THE FILM

the film's yexy is reasonably straightforward. Harry Lime has summonded his old friend Holly Martins to Vienna. When Martins arrives he finds that Lime has died and just been taken to the cemetary. He goes there and sees severl people including an Army major who warns him that Harry was the worst racketter around, but Martins, who is something of an alcoholic and a grade B writer with no money, doesn't believe this and bumbles his way around th worst gang of blackmarketeers in Vienna.

Among the people he meets is Anna Schmidt a woman who has lived through a terrible wat and is now in a city where no one helps anyone else. Harry, her lover (as we learn) did do her a favor by getting her a forged passport so she would not be reclaimed by the Russians.

Ultimately Martins is convinced of the terrible nature of Lime's activities and is pursuaded to help the British capture him, although he refuses at first to do so out of loyalty. He is ultimately convinced when Anna, whose forged passport has been discovered, is made the bait and Holly who has fallen for her, can get her away from Vienna if he helps. She refuses to be the price, and refuses to leave. Holly helps the Brtish anyway and ultimately kills Lime himself. Anna rejects him and the film ends.

On the surface the film asks questions about loyalty and ultimately the oft repeated question of whether people are bad or only the acts they do. The question of personal loyalty is involked in the ways in which Martins and Anna interact with the British and Lime. Of the Time

The film is made at the end of the war and even in ’49 the war was still fresh in everyone’s mind. America was not bombed (Hawaii was not even a state and most people hardly knew where it was).

Wells had a reputation and while there was some feeling he was “box office death”, he was hardly an unknown. People did go to see him and in fact his delay in appearing is as odd as Janet Leigh’s disappearance in Psycho.

The Film

Without putting too much stress on it, how are language and music used in the film?

What can you say about the use of language? What does it do?

Use of German without subtitles – reliance on someone to translate puts viewer in Holly’s position.

Who tells story: This is UK version. Narrator is unknown – appears to be black marketer. Not too happy with Vienna – didn’t know the old one – prefers Constantinople/Istanbul.

American version has Holly narrate. Attempt made to make Holly (American) less of an incompetent.

Use of unusual instrument – zither. Only instrument in film. Strong feeling of “old world”, not American

Note comment about “Strauss’ Vienna”. To whom is the narrator referring?

Characters:

Holly Martins (called a "silly name" in the film. It is often ambigously a man's and woman's name and Holly is also both hero and fool. Clumsy, unable to afford his own ticket to Vienna, he bores his literary audience, drinks, gets bitten by parrot etc. Causes solution almost by error.

Anna: been through it all.

Lime: A somewhat charming user etc. Harry is like many serial killers about whom the people who knew them say "He was a quiet pleasant person".

Names are a problem to people in the film.: Holly confuses Winkel and Vinkel and Callahan and Calloway while Anna confuses Harry/Holly

Is Lime a kind of play on (Graham) Greene, the author?

Location as Character

Problems of living in a place like Vienna after the war. Cynical, black market. Sets make an ideal representation of decay.

Some indication of homosexual elements in film – why? Is it Nazi decadence?

Are Winkle and violinist (Baron Kurtz) involved?

Evidence?

Where are the climaxes? How are they handled?

The initial problem in this film deals largely with what happened to Harry Lime. How did he die? Surprise is of course he isn’t dead so his appearance becomes a crucial moment in the film. Lime’s entrance is seen as one of the great entrances in film. How is it built up photographically. The script forewarns us that Harry is about to appear. Anna says the cat only liked Harry and then we see the cat approach someone in the doorway and play with shoes.

This is a kind of set-up. Several of these in the film

Request for Holly to give talk appears to be there in order to let him stay in Vienna, but actually it allows a scene of tension when Holly appears to be being kidnapped and also to let us see how unfamiliar he is with literature when he gives the talk and everyone walks out.

Little boy comes and plays with ball while Holly has “intense” discussion with porter. Seems insignificant, but later it allows the boy to accuse Holly of the murder of the porter.

Harry’s ultimate entrapment in sewer: visual of fingers coming through grate. Only sound is wind

Dutch angles

Many dutch angles – things are not “on the level”

Tension building:

Often with delay in film. When Calloway and Paine wait for Harry to appear, the balloon man comes and one suspects it may be Harry himself at first.

Disorienting geography (especially in sewers) Can’t tell relationships between people in the sewer.

Visual indications of something to come: cat and Harry.

Suddenness of event. Generally sudden actions cause shock, not tension

Shock: People sitting around a table – suddenly a bomb goes off.

Tension: people sitting around a table and we see the bomb and the timer or lit fuse. The director cuts back and forth between the bomb and the people (who don’t know it is there). This is tension – whether the bomb goes off or not. In tension – we know what will happen, the characters don’t.

Parallel structures:

I After funeral: Anna walks along road and Holly and Callaway pass her in the car and he looks at her.

After Lime is killed: Holly by car on road. Anna walks along and ignores him

These shots give a kind of circularity to the film. We see something similar at the beginning and at the end.

II High angle shot of conspirators on bridge looking like dots.

High angle shot of people on ground from Ferris wheel.

These seem to relate to the conversation between Harry and Holly on the Ferris wheel.

Dutch angles

– especially in close up. When we get close to people we find they are not “on the level”

Lighting

Very much "noir" lighting (high contrast, chiaroscuro). Pools of light surrounded by darkness. Hard to see or know what is the darkness. Figures become isolated. Exaggerated shadows. Distortions.

III Entrances and exits

In theater a person’s appearance on stage is ether being “discovered” or entering.

The vanish from view with some sort of blackout or curtain or leave the stage.

In film the camera can reveal the person

Lime’s first appearance

Long build up

Delay tactics for suspense.

Sequence with balloon man stretches the tension – his figure almost looks like Welles and we wonder “Is it Welles in disguise?”

TEXT AND SUB TEXT

What is the TEXT? What happens in the film?

What is the subtext: How do we analyze subtext? Many approaches

Can we generalize of extrapolate from the film to something larger than the story?

Characters:

Can we talk about what the characters represent?

What are their characteristics? No sure fire way to know what to look at. Here – Americans vs. Europeans is one division

Among the characteristics of people in the films it is often the case that gender, sexuality, race, nationality, age etc. may have meaning.

Consider little boy and cat – both not really socialize and create problems.

Generalizing out

QUESTION OF FRIENDSHIP AND BETRAYAL

What is more important? Anna and Holly react differently. How does this relate to their characters.

Moral judgment about Harry Lime vs. war.

Classic scene in Ferris Wheel:

Classic line about Borgias and cuckoo clocks (written by Welles, pilfered from another writer – he says it in film too)

Do we have the right to questions Harry’s crime in light of WWII

Stop moving dots.

Is Harry more reprehensible than Churchill and the saturation bombing of Dresden or the A bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Pilots who dropped bombs were shown the damage they did (as a kind of reward to see how fgood they were, and then they were incapable of doing it again

Moral ambiguity: Do those little specks matter? Americans and English and allies had been doing just that in WWII killing “specks” Common that when pilots saw damage their bombs had done they could not do any more bombing. Many were women and children (like those in the ward where Calloway takes Holly), Calloway upset that bad penicillin was given to wounded soldiers – how did they get wounded?

Anna can maybe judge, but not “moral hypocrites” like Calloway and Martins.

No one thinks about human beings – governments don’t - they talk about proletariat etc.

Does the film say something about attitudes to Americans. There aer only 2 in the film. What are they like?

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