The music in “The Third Man” is supposed to be considered a great piece of work. A dusted art from the dark corners in a wine bar in Vienna was brought out when director Carol Reed and actor Trevor Howard fell in love with the Zither music by Anton Karas in there. If I had to listen to it as a music and not along with the film, I might have liked it but when it is forcefully gelled with the film, I could not stand the music. I tried to embrace it but it irritated the hell out of me when the spectacular eerie shots of Robert Krasker were followed by a comical and unsuitable score of Karas. That would be a major factor in me not able to fall in love with an otherwise good film noir.Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) comes to post World War - II Vienna with the four powers still having their zone of control and dominance. In that emerges the black market and racketeering. Martins a novella writer has arrived to meet his long time friend Harry Lime. He is received by the shocking news of his accident. He attends the funeral where there are the suspicious personalities and a lady to charm him. The lady would be Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli). As his pulpy novels, Martins begins to investigate after an out of chord stories from couple of people who were there during the accident and his friend being said as a racketeer. That puts him into the rough and high attitude Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) and his smart and sharp soldier Sergeant Paine (Bernard Lee). Also to give in to the eventuality is Holly falling for Anna becomes another factor in this riddle. Now you should know that Anna was Lime’s woman.
While the set up seems easy to be predicted, “The Third Man” has a lot more than that in store. For starters would be the beautiful Vienna and the cinematography in gripping the stone roads and broken buildings. The tilted angles of the camera to view from atop and up close to the faces and the shoulder looks where the characters are confused and are in a dark. But the chase in sewer is where the man is given his freedom to get the lighting, darkness and shadow mix and give us a flurry of sleek shots. The silhouette of Martins going into the tunnel and the culprit to be caught turning with a pose to perfectly mark the thrill of noir.
The film which takes its time to move through mazes of paranoid and air of doubt gets a jolt and charm from the entry of Orson Welles. Without revealing much of the plot Welles comes as this curt and daring personality. A devious man who explains to Holly on the expendable nature of people to earn profits and have a livelihood of enormous value. He sees himself as the soldier of fortune with a few small heads to stomp and have his life of wealth. But how much do we love that man. For all the time Holly took to even get a stare from Anna, Welles’ character without any scene with her make us understand how much he can command the attraction from the same lady in a jiffy.
Looking close at “The Third Man” there would be flaws in plots and the untied knots which would go unnoticed. It is an experiment for the days of strange nature of cynicism evolving in the climate of post war. The settling dust does not recede the tension and cloud of international upheaval existing through miniscule events fearing to form a chain reaction. That is the atmosphere the story happens with Russians, British, Americans and French in a constant hold for their part of their property and how it plays down to the life of the people living out there.
I have heard bad music for a bad film but I have never experienced a bad music for a good film. The casual Zither tone sucks away the enormous gravity of the noir darkness, seriousness and of all even the sharpest sarcasm done in a wicked comic play. It plays comical almost the entire part of the film and it is not funny. The only part which it did good is the final sequence when the hopes are risen and snubbed with a mellowness and the protagonist’s reaction to it fitting it nicely. “The Third Man” is a film I almost loved to be driven off by its score.
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