The Third Man
Fingers poking through a sewer grate – not an image you’d figure for a cinematic showstopper. But in the tense climax to this peerless film noir – a deep dive into espionage and paranoia in postwar Vienna as penned by Graham Greene (with an assist from star Orson Welles) – we’re sunk underground, racing through dank, dripping sewers with Joseph Cotten’s Holly Martins as he tries to stop the escape of Welles’ nefarious Harry Lime. The feeling is claustrophobic and grows more so as a wounded Lime pulls himself agonizingly up a spiral staircase, step by step, toward freedom. When he finally reaches through the grate at the top, director Carol Reed abruptly cuts to street level, to show Lime’s fingers slowly rising through the holes like alien sprouts, the only life on this deserted thoroughfare, eerily silent save for a keening wind. It’s a startling, brilliant break from what’s come before, the most haunting image in a film teeming with them, and on the big screen, it takes your breath away.
Sat., May 28, 3pm & Sun., May 29, 4:15pm (P)
This article appears in May 20 • 2016.