Man, just how great is Orson Welles?
Can you name another major American filmmaker—world filmmaker, for that matter—who was not only responsible for multiple, medium-defining masterpieces but also turned in stellar performances as both leading man and supporting actor?
Cassavetes comes to mind, though he was often overshadowed onscreen by his partner and muse Gena Rowlands. Woody Allen revolutionized the serio-comic film and was, at the same time, very capable as an actor in his own screenplays; but he had a limited schtick, and one which he (and others) would eventually run to the ground. The great Silent Clowns may be close comparisons, and Welles himself professed a deep admiration for Buster Keaton. De Sica was a fine actor, certainly; and the pioneering Swedish director Victor Sjöström performed splendidly in Bergman’s Wild Strawberries as its main character.
After these (name-drop some of your own, as I’ve inevitably short-shrifted at least a few notables), though, it’s slim pickings. Clint Eastwood? A spaghetti western icon, yes, but his own films as a director do not hold a candle to Sergio Leone’s, much less Welles’s. Tarantino? Nope. Mel Gibson? Please. Tim Blake Nelson is a good actor and filmmaker—but medium-defining? No dice. (I do not count those who turned in only cameos or bit parts, such as Scorsese, Hitchcock, Sayles, etc.) And I won’t be considering up-and-comers like Greta Gerwig, Jordan Peele, or Bradley Cooper just yet, if you can find it in your heart to forgive me…
The obvious answer is no, of course not, because Orson Welles was one-of-one. As has been mentioned before on this site, no other director could manifest such staggering quality from shoe-string, practically spun-out-of-thin-air budgets over-against the vagaries of studio interference. No other director could balance, in their acting roles, theatrical gravitas with cinematic understatement to such an acute degree. And no other director could lie through his teeth about anything that happened to be on the table while making his audience gorge on every trumped-up, well-ordered word.
The film in question isn’t even one Welles directed—though some critics, for understandable reasons, disagree—but it is one he practically stole away in every other sense from the man who is credited for such; that man being the British filmmaker Carol Reed (The Fallen Idol, Night Train to Munich, etc.), and the film being, of course, the 1949 noir classic The Third Man. But isn’t it fitting that a film so concerned with identities—those mistaken, those secreted, and those dramatically uncovered—should have so much controversy regarding its true provenance?
Written by Graham Greene, The Third Man is set in postwar Vienna, an incomplete city both in terms of its ruinous state (rubble from the wartime bombings are a key characteristic of the film, which depicts a Europe in steady ascent yet still on its knees) and its partitioned condition: Four zones split the city, and are each controlled by a different Allied Power.
Into the British sector walks Holly Martins (the estimable Joseph Cotten), an American writer of pulp literature who has arrived under the auspices of a job offer from his old school friend Harry Lime. But as he enters Lime’s abode, the porter tells him that he’s just missed the ambulance: Lime was killed by a car right outside the building in a freak accident.
Perturbed, Martins attends the funeral, where he sees a beautiful woman distraught over Lime’s freshly turned grave. He is right away accosted by two British policemen: Major Calloway (Trevor Howard, whom you might know from David Lean’s Brief Encounter) and Sergeant Paine (Bernard Lee), a tall jolly man who happens to be a fan of Martins’s schlock novels. Calloway treats the writer to a drink but he’s all business, especially taking a keen interest in the depth of Martins’s relationship with Lime.
It’s from Calloway that Martins learns of Lime’s supposed history of criminal activity in Vienna. While he is irked by the man’s accusations, this information drives Martins to dig deeper into the matter of his friend’s death—was it a freak accident after all, or was something more sinister at play?
This hunt for the truth will take Martins all around the city, into concert halls and government offices, through its blasted, lamp-lit avenues and the sewers underneath; he will encounter unsavory types like the self-styled Baron Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch), an acquaintance of Lime’s who seems to know a good deal more than he lets on, and less unsavory types like the woman at the funeral, Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli, or simply “Valli” as credited), an actress who was Lime’s lover, and who immediately captures Martins’s affection.
While tiptoeing around spoilers seems pointless this many decades after the film’s release, I’ll refrain from too much summary even so: There is much pleasure in watching how the plot unfolds, though it should be obvious early on to the astute viewer that Lime, most likely, has faked his death; especially after Martins learns of a “third man” present at the scene of Lime’s death/murder who helps move his body off the street, when the official report lists only two.
The film is littered with great shot after great shot, and is a masterclass in the usage of Dutch angles. They’re not only responsible for capturing an arresting image, but very much in keeping with the “skewed” nature of the mystery, and Martins’s inability to get things straight time and time again, no matter how ardent his pursuit. (Case in point: his obsession over Anna, in spite of her carrying a torch for Lime even after his “death.”
This playing with perspective further carries out the deeper messaging of the film, past the twists and turns of the plot, since The Third Man is all about perspective, especially as it relates to the moral conduct of man, in particular, and men, at large; and of the lengths a man will go when he sees himself and others through the scope of generalization, where lives are statistics, mere data on a passport, and deaths become dollars.
And in the middle of it all runs poor Martins, who knows just enough about himself to see his life’s work as fodder but not enough to quit certain delusions; story-teller enough to sniff out a play when conducted right under his nose, but naive to the force of those greater games staged by criminals and state officials and other such con men. Few scenes rival the final one in its depiction of vain attachment, of being cuckolded by defeat in the wake of victory.
The Third Man is so great that, in the end, its “true” creator is ultimately less significant the fact that it exists at all. Did Orson Welles contribute a good deal to the film both performance and script-wise? Certainly, and we know for a fact that he was responsible for the famed “cuckoo clock” speech at the end of his Ferris Wheel exchange with Martins. Visually (shot by Robert Krasker) it very much takes after early Welles, but one can also believe in the sheer fortuity of three different post-war sensibilities—Greene, Reed, Welles—coming together to create a noir that becomes more than the sum of its parts. (Welles, of course, was hardly the first director to utilize stark lighting and odd angles to evoke an atmosphere.)
As for Reed never directing, either before or after, a film equal to the quality of The Third Man: if you knew Orson Welles was going to play a critical role in your film, and were bound to work closely with him in a few key scenes, wouldn’t you want to up your game, too? Granted, this is the only Reed film I’ve seen, but from everything I’ve heard, he was a solid enough technician/studio director to channel into being—at least once in his life—a story as good as this one.
The Welles issue, though, is a compelling one; if it wasn’t, the legend of misattributed credit would not have persisted as long as it did. And it’s the sort of legend Welles would have savored, enough of a potential scandal to compel his humility in the matter while allowing him, at the same time, to pad his own reputation and further cloak himself in the airs of a cosmopolitan man of intrigue.
Think again of Harry Lime’s introduction: that strange figure steeped in shadow, doted on by a kitten while Martins drawls for him to step into the light. But then light is thrown onto his hiding place, at once flashing for the first time that amused visage, almost cherubic in its appeal were it not for the aura of danger the name “Harry Lime” carries even post-mortem. But now Martins wonders: do the dead walk in Vienna?
Then that smirk at his friend’s shock—while the zither mischievously sings—as if to say: “Yes, it’s me, old boy. It’s been me all along.”
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