Review: The Third Man DVD

Page Two - A Review of The Third Man Criterion Collection DVD

When Martins tracks down Anna in her dressing room, after she performs in a play at the Josephstadt Theater, he learns that she wonders if Lime's death was an accident. After a while, they go to Lime’s apartment and talk to the porter, who witnessed the immediate aftermath of Lime's death. The porter mentions that three men -- not two as Martins was previously led to believe -- carried Lime away from the scene of the accident. The identity of the third man remains a mystery that Martins is determined to solve, hoping that this will hold the key to Lime's death.

When Martins takes Anna home, the police are searching her apartment, and they find her forged passport. Martins -- who has started to fall in love with Anna -- loses his composure and lashes out, accusing the police of indifference and incompetence. "I suppose it wouldn't interest you to know that Harry Lime was murdered? You're too busy. You haven't even bothered to get the complete evidence. And there was a third man there. I suppose that doesn't sound peculiar to you." But Calloway dismisses this, putting Martins off by saying coolly, "Go home, Martins, like a sensible chap. You don't know what you're mixing in. Get the next plane." Incensed by the seeming indifference of the police and inspired by loyalty to his friend, Martins is undaunted: "As soon as I get to the bottom of this, I'll get the next plane." Calloway responds as if he were trying to reason with a willful child: "Death's at the bottom of everything, Martins. Leave death to the professionals." Martins responds, "Mind if I use that line in my next western?" But he's now in a more complex, more morally murky world than that of pulp fiction.

Martins soon interviews Dr. Winkel, who arrived on the scene just after Lime's death, and asks him: "Was it possible that his death might have been not accidental? Could he have been pushed, Dr. Winkel?" But he gets a vague answer. As Martins' investigation progresses, it becomes apparent that things do not add up, and eventually it becomes clear that little about Lime is what it seems. As Martins sorts through a quicksand of deception, attempting to find his way to the truth, he discovers things along the way that he's reluctant to believe. Although Martins at one point drunkenly asserts that Lime was the "best friend I ever had," he clearly didn't know him well at all.

What unfolds from here is a tale of friendship and betrayal. Holly Martins' investigation results in his losing part of his innocence. By the movie's end, it seems possible that the voice-over narration that begins The Third Man might be the opening of a novel that Martins writes after leaving Vienna. After what he experiences there, he can't be a pulp writer anymore: gone are the simple, clearly drawn ideas of good and evil that informed his westerns. This new novel will be a darker, more complex work, filled with a bittersweet wisdom.

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