What do You think about The Third Man (1999)?
"The Third Man" is one of my favorite movies and Greene's novelization of his and Carol Reed's script does a pretty good job of transferring it to print.Of interest in this edition is Greene's introduction, where the reader learns, among other things, that the famous "cuckoo clock" line was Orson Welles' invention, and that Reed insisted on the film's ending rather than what Greene originally wrote (a decision that, in retrospect, Greene endorsed).As Greene admits, the book is an outgrowth of the movie as he couldn't write a script without first writing a story. As such, the movie is the more polished and satisfying product but that doesn't detract from the fact that The Third Man on its own is not a bad little thriller.
—Terence
A few nights ago a man who sat next to me at a dinner party said he’d always wanted to write fiction—as I do—and that he’d like to collaborate with me on a novel of international espionage.He was an Israeli by birth, spoke accented English, but has a PhD from a good American university and a long list of non-fiction publications in his special field, which is the Middle East.I said, “What is your idea of an excellent book—something you’d like to have written yourself?” His reply, without hesitation: The Third Man.Okay, I thought, Greene is one of my favorite writers, and I had never read The Third Man, only seen the movie, so I’ll get a copy and see if it’s as good as the movie, which is a quiet masterpiece of intrigue in post-WWII Europe.In short, the movie is better, but there’s an odd story about that. Greene wrote the screenplay, but to prepare himself to do so, he wrote the novella first…and after the movie came out, he published the novella.This is an interesting mode of composition, whether Greene pursued it as he normally did by writing exactly 500 words each morning or not.I usually recapitulate the plot of a book when I comment on it, but this book, through the movie, is so well known that I’ll cut to the chase: the action and plot twists get in the way of Greene’s superb prose, which normally is both evocative and beautifully cadenced.Here there are bursts of dialogue, undeveloped characters, characters wearing toupees who don’t need them, and a passionate outbreak of love in the main character that surprises the reader as much as it apparently surprised the woman towards whom it was directed.Both the movie and the book suffer from one defect, and it’s pretty serious: the villainous Harry Lime (Orson Welles) stages his own death early in the action and then returns after it’s been established by hearsay that he makes his money distributing and watering down penicillin on the black market. He’s cool and untroubled about this; that’s his flair, I suppose. But objectively speaking, his activity is hideous…and yet we never really have an opportunity to probe his motivations and personal corruption.Of course, Greene writes well and cleverly enough to tell a tale worth reading, but again, it’s not as good as the movie, and for me that is almost never the case.
—Robert
Vienna after WWII, sliced into four sectors with pocked-marked buildings and rubble from bombings, is a powerful character in Greene's THE THIRD MAN. The street grates separate the light from the dark of human nature, and yes, "Everybody ought to go careful in a city like this."Holly Martins arrived in Vienna just in time to attend Harry Lime's unexpected funeral. Martins, a writer of cheap novelettes, hears an unconvincing story of his friend's accidental death...he has been run over by a truck. It is reported that Lime was carried away by three men, Baron Kurtz and Popescu, but who was THE THIRD MAN?Major Calloway, an investigator in the international police force, tells Martins that his friend's death was the best thing that ever happened to Lime, the worse racketeer that "ever made a dirty living in this city." Martins doesn't believe the accusations and sets out to prove the Major wrong.Holly finds loopholes and inconsistencies in everyone's report of Lime's life in the devastated city. Was he selling diluted penicillin on the black market causing the deaths of children and war victims? And was Lime still alive, hiding in the Russian sector giving up information about his friends including his lover, Anna, to buy him time to get away from the closed city?When Holly sees his friend standing in the shadows of an archway, a cat playing with his shoe laces, he knows the truth. Harry is alive, guilty of greed and murder, yet free and protected from arrest and conviction. Holly is now willing to be Calloway's "dumb decoy duck" to lure Lime from the shadows.Their meeting at the ferris wheel, a reminder of happier times, reveals changes in Harry Lime, as he rationalizes his behavior...The Borges of Italy murdered, caused warfare and terror, and produced a Michelangelo. The Swiss proclaimed brotherly love for five hundred years, and all they produced was the coo-coo clock.Graham Greene wrote this novella with a screenplay in mind. Bringing the story to the screen has left a permanent record of intrique when the rules of society were negated, and the resulting ruin of war and morals could be easily observed. Like "Citizen Kane" for American audiences, THE THIRD MAN is said to be the favorite movie in England. Due to the masterful plot and vivid characterizations, I would have to agree with the Brits. Highest Recommendation!
—Cheryl Kennedy
