The Third Man - Graham Greene

Just finished The Third Man by Graham Greene.
Thanks for the suggestion Pompey! I have always meant to get around to reading the rest of Graham Greene. This is my fourth and confirms that he's my favorite type of author: Someone who writes a literary page turner. There are fewer of them out there than one might think!
This was a great little story. Managed to be truly surprising, great sense of place, and I had this fantastic movie playing in my mind the whole time I was reading. He really creates a sense of tension/suspense in this story. A stranger in a strange town, things going wildly wrong as soon as he gets there. A mysterious death and shady people all around. I didn't even trust the narrator! Plus a little humor thrown in for good measure. Good stuff.

I'm glad you enjoyed it and I'm glad it surprised you. I was a little worried when Emil posted the definitive spoiler on the Conrad/Victory thread, and Kev reposted it in a quote. Glad you didn't get it. :)

Now if you get a chance you ought to see the Carol Reed movie, starring Orson Wells and Joseph Cotton, and featuring a spookily bombed out and shadowy Vienna, and the famous zither theme. A tiny detail at the very end of the story is different (and better) in the movie. See of you can catch it.

Am I right in thinking that story was written as a film script?

I think it was a novella written to be scripted. That's why it's so short.

The theme tune of the film is very catchy, or it was in 1950. I still sometimes hum it to myself.

Did it become dubbed " The Harry Lime" theme, or is my brain addled?

Yes, that was it. Very catchy tune.

This book would make an excellent subject for a book review in the book review thread: espionage in Vienna during the cold war.

Is the Third Man fiction or non-fiction? I have read the book "Spycatcher" by Peter Wright, which I understand caused quite a stir when it came out because of some of the allegations that were made. I found a very interesting read.

Greene and Carol Reed were great drinking friends who went out to Vienna to look for possible sites prior to filming. Reed had worked with Robert Krasker, on Odd Man Out three years earlier which had been a success, due not least to Krasker's camerawork, so he was secure in the knowledge that the scenic quality would be right.
It was a stroke of brilliance to get Anton Karas to write the music using only a zither to heighten or lighten the mood as required.
Reed got a nomination for best director but it was Krasker who carried off the Academy Award for best photography.

Here's an interesting video showing some of the key sights that appear in the film contrasted with how they look today. I should add that there are potential SPOILERS included.


http://youtu.be/sbfKibLRqqQ

I love Greene. Haven't read a book of his that has disappointed me so far and I might be inclined to suggest that he was the best British writer of the 20th cc.

~ waits for her brave but silly comment to be shredded into pieces ~

You can read Third Man on a pdf file: http://www.rsanders.nl/ebooks/The%20Third%20Man.pdf. The Harry Lime theme brings back memories from my childhood.

Yes the camera work was something special, the kitten, the balloon seller’s giant shadow before he came into sight and possibly the longest single end shot in movie history and much more. I think also that if it were filmed in colour it would have lost half its impact but no doubt some will disagree.

Paul Fussell wrote a funny evisceration of Greene's prose. I can't find a link any more, but I apparently copied it once. Here's part of it:

Quote:

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: "[Greene] knows he doesn't write very well, although he thinks his main trouble is ineffective metaphor and blurred visual perception. It is true that his metaphors are very often skewed and vague, but actually his main handicap is his inability to master English syntax and the fine points of English sentence structure....The jacket copy of WAYS OF ESCAPE proclaims that Greene 'is the most distinguished living writer in the English language.' [That statement] is impertinent and illiterate, and the evidence to refute it is so palpable that it's embarrasing. Actually, Greene's writing is so patently improvable that it could serve pedagogic purposes, as follows:

: EXAMINATION: English 345, Expository writing

: The following passages have been written by Mr. Graham Greene in his book "Ways of Escape." They have been passed by his editors and approved by his publishers, who assert that Graham Greene is "the most distinguished living writer in the English language." Rewrite each passage as directed.

: 1. Correct the grammar:

: a. "I am not sure that I detect much promise in [Orient Express] except in the character of Colonel Hartep, the Chief of Police, whom I suspect survived into the world of Aunt Augusta and TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT."

: b. "In my hotel the Ofloffson..., there were three guests besides myself: the Italian manager of the casino and an old American artist and his wife -- a gentle couple whom I cannot deny bore some resemblance to Mr. and Mrs. Smith of [THE COMEDIANS]."

: c. "The day of the Lee-Enfield and the Maxim gun were more favorable to the European than those of the dive-bomber and the Bren."

: 2. Shift the misplaced modifier to the right position:

: "it is only since the Revolution that the Pole, I believe, has changed his habit of only communicating on certain major feast days."

: 3. Eliminate the jargon:

: "What the [Polish] authorities had not realized was the effectiveness of this play [Eliot's MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL], at this moment in time, in modern dress..."

: 4. Suggest alternative phrasing to eliminate the cliches:

: a. "The game...was not worth the candle."

: b. "These men [at Dien Bien Phu] were aware of what they resembled -- sitting ducks."

: c. "Resettlement was a turn of the screw of discomfort."

: d. "A Ghurka patrol worked by the compass and not by paths. It moved as the crow flies."

: e. "For me to describe Brighton was really a labor of love."

: f. "The sudden arrival in 1931 down a muddy Gloucestershire lane of a Norwegian poet whom I didn't know from Adam seemed uncomfortable."

: 5. Eliminate the awkwardness:

: "A writer's imagination, like the body, fights against all reason against death."

: 6. Eliminate the redundancy:

: "Next day [in Israel] I met a Burmese officer, a Frenchman, a Swede and a Finn (English was the common language they all spoke)."

: 7. Reconstruct the sentence to eliminate excessive prepositions:

: "Suicide was Scobie's inevitable end; the particular motive of his suicide, to save even God from himself, was the final twist of the screw of his inordinate pride."

: 8. Give the sentence a backbone and eliminate the awkwardness:

: "Some critics have found in [TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT] a kind of resume' of my literary career -- a scene in Brighton, the journey on the Orient Express -- and perhaps a hint of this did come to mind by the time Aunt Augusta arrived at the Pera Palace, but what struck me with some uneasiness, when I reread the book the other day, were the suggestions I found in it where the future was going to take me."

: "Be sure your name is on your paper."

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Funny but perfectly ridiculous, too. Greene was unfortunately plagued with that sort of venom in his later years. He had been in some ways a traitor to his class--if only by his then controversial conversion to Catholicism. He had been a cuttingly honest literary critic himself, and that didn't always make him friends. (He was also, apparently, a truly bad husband). But for a more nuanced appreciation of Greene, here is an interesting piece from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/bo...17COVTHER.html

I've never read any of Greene's novels, although I've read some short stories. So I don't have an opinion one way or another. If Fussell is right about Greene's prose, perhaps the lesson is that elegant and correct prose are not essential qualities of great novels.

I thought some of the writers here might enjoy Fussell's quiz, though.