The Third Man

by Graham Greene

Even a film depends on more than plot, on a certain measure of characterization, on mood and atmosphere; and these seem to me almost impossible to capture for the first time in the dull shorthand of a script.

he should not imagine these changes were forced on an unwilling author: as likely as not they were suggested by the author. The film in fact, is better than the story because it is in this case the finished state of the story.

(Incidentally, the popular line of dialogue concerning Swiss cuckoo clocks was written into the script by Mr Welles himself.)

The episode of the Russians kidnapping Anna (a perfectly possible incident in Vienna) was eliminated at a fairly late stage. It was not satisfactorily tied into the story, and it threatened to turn the film into a propagandist picture.

The other day in London a surgeon took two friends to see the film. He was surprised to find them subdued and depressed by a picture he had enjoyed. They then told him that at the end of the war when they were with the Royal Air Force they had themselves sold penicillin in Vienna. The possible consequences of their act had never before occurred to them.

It was February, and the gravediggers had been forced to use electric drills to open the frozen ground in Vienna’s Central Cemetery. It was as if even nature were doing its best to reject Lime, but we got him in at last and laid the earth back on him like bricks.

I never knew Vienna between the wars, and I am too young to remember the old Vienna with its Strauss music and its bogus easy charm;

Sunday had laid its false peace over Vienna; the wind had dropped and no snow had fallen for twenty-four hours.

There was nothing to fear, but all the same, in this huge empty street where all the time you heard your own feet moving, it was difficult not to look behind.

if you can get in touch with the dead, hurry.’ He added, ‘Remember, I was Harry’s friend.’

above. If you have ever read the adventures of Allan Quatermain and the account of his voyage along the underground river to the city of Milosis, you will

be able to picture the scene of Lime’s last stand.

a searchlight from fifty yards away lit the whole channel, caught Harry in its beams, then Martins, then the staring eyes of Bates slumped at the water’s edge with the sewage washing to his waist. An empty cigarette carton wedged into his armpit and stayed.

I looked up and Martins was out of sight in the darkness. I called his name and it was lost in a confusion of echoes,

just as an animal creeps into the dark to die, so I suppose a man makes for the light. He wants to die at home, and the darkness is never home to us.

Then he began to whimper again. I couldn’t bear it any more and I put a bullet through him.’ ‘We’ll forget that bit,’ I said. Martins said, ‘I never shall.’