The Third Man - An Ending Analysis

Discuss the way Carol Reed’s technique affects our response to the last fifteen minutes of The Third Man

You could question why Carol Reed chose to shoot the film in Vienna. I think it was supposed to symbolise Harry Lime. It was beautiful but the film is filmed just after the Second World War. The place was crumbled and it lay in ruin.

Carol Reed had built up a lot of tension in the square already when the soldiers are waiting for Harry Lime to appear. So he had to find a way to release some of it. The drunken balloon man was a fantastic way in which to do this. In the shadows he looks like an enormous larger than life monster and you feel a lot of apprehension because you think it’s Harry. So when he appears around the corner and you discover he’s just a stumbling old drunk there’s a massive anti-climax. When he starts trying to sell the officers a balloon it adds humour to what is still a very tense situation.

Carol Reed’s clever use of the point of view shot when Harry’s looking over the square evokes a certain kind of sympathy for him. It shows how oblivious he is of the twenty or so soldiers, waiting to arrest him. You momentarily forget about all the things he’s done. You feel that no matter how much he had this coming, no one deserves this kind of deception from their best friend. He trusted Holly enough to turn up and there is simple, cheerful music playing in the background. You get the sense that he’s not all bad and the penicillin and the murders and the deceptions are just things he’s done, not who he is. You feel that he is somewhat a victim of circumstances and now he’s just painted himself into a corner.

Calloway is a very interesting character. He’s portrayed throughout the film as morally unprincipled and almost desperate to catch Harry. These mannerisms really tend to exploit Holly and Anna’s naivety when it comes to Harry. It makes it seem as though Calloway is decidedly intolerant of Harry and very unsympathetic towards him. But when Harry shoots the officer down in the sewers we realise that Calloway is in fact the only one who can see Harry for what he is. Holly and Anna seem almost incapable of doing this, and as we see at the end of the film, in Anna’s eyes Harry was innocent of any wrongdoing. Calloway is, although somewhat manipulative, extremely intelligent because he knows the only way to persuade Holly to deceive his best friend is to show Holly the children at the hospital. He knows that Holly has benevolence and seeing the dying children will be more than he can bear.

The relationship between Calloway and Holly reminds me of one between owner and pet. It’s extremely obvious that Holly holds Calloway in very high regard and has a great deal of respect for him. Calloway also seems to govern a form of supremacy over Holly and Holly essentially flaunts the fact that he’s willing to comply.

I think the penicillin Harry was selling is symbolic of Harry himself. The penicillin was intended for good but it was watered down and became a kind of poison. Harry was smart, handsome and quick-witted but he was corrupted and, whether he intended it or not, everything he touched turned to dust. He completely destroyed Anna, he killed the whistle-blower to aid his own escape from the police and he sold the watered down penicillin to hospitals, which resulted in the deaths of several people including children. He basically put a price on people’s lives.

The damage the penicillin did was irreparable. I think Holly shot Harry because he thought Harry was too corrupt for anything to be done for him there had been too much that had happened. Both cases carry the idea of irreparable damage. I think Carol Reed intended for the penicillin’s effects to be symbolic of Harry’s character. After Harry shot the officer I think that in his mind, despite it not being the real reason, it justified shooting Harry to Holly.

After Harry’s funeral Calloway and Holly are driving away, when they drive past Anna. Holly asks Calloway “Isn’t there something you can do for her?” But the way in which he asks the question makes it sound almost rhetorical and it’s clear he doesn’t expect Calloway to answer.

When Holly goes to stand by the wagon to wait for Anna I think he’s perfectly aware that she’s not going to stop. After all that has happened it would be too much to expect her to and Holly would have been naпve to think that she would. I think he waited so he’d know that he tried and she knew too. This scene reminds me of when Harry put his fingers through the grating to try and escape. Both of them are seemingly pointless last-ditch attempts, which, both characters know, are not going to work. If you know it’s not going to work you would think it were a pointless exercise. But when it comes down to it, all anyone can ever do is try. I think Holly needed Anna to know that he’d tried.

When Anna is walking towards Holly in the final shot, you see that leaves start falling. If you look carefully you will see that the leaves are apparently falling from nowhere. This means that Carol Reed went to the trouble to put them in, which means that they’re not just there to look to pretty. I think the leaves are symbolic of the fact that life goes on. What happened was tragic but the trees will still lose their leaves in autumn only to grow new ones the spring, the flowers will still bloom and then they’ll still die and you can’t do anything to stop it.

After Anna walks away in the final shot you see Holly throw his cigarette on the floor despite the fact it’s only been smoked about half way down. The screen then dissolves towards the cigarette. You get the feeling that, although the “good guys” came out on top in the end, it has been at Anna’s expense. When she walks past Holly, it shows us that Harry is still the one in control, Holly and Anna will never live happily ever after, which is your original perception of what will happen in the final scene. I think the final scene is so long because, despite your original hope that Anna will stop, the longer you watch her walk and the closer she becomes, you realise how unlikely it is. I felt that for Holly at least, Harry may be dead but it is at most a Pyrrhic victory. You are left with the definite reality that this is not a happy ending, but the most optimistic of us can still hope that after the end Anna turned around and fell in Holly’s arms and it would be the kind of ending that’s so perfect you only usually see them in fairytales.

It’s the same kind of blind faith you feel at the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In your heart you realise the obviousness of the truth, and you know that Butch and Sundance both died, but in the back of your mind you still have this almost subliminal pipe dream that cries out for a happy ending. I think we feel these kinds of emotions because we’re so used to a happy-ever-after finale. Statistics show that audiences pine for everything to turn out right at the end of the story because they feel connected with the characters. They forget that in fact the whole film is an alternative reality created in the head of the writer.

Because of this most directors refuse to have a sad ending as it risks disappointing your target audience. But if the risk pays off you end with a highly acclaimed film. For proof of this you only have to look back as far as 1997. Titanic has a tragic ending, Rose’s soul mate dies and she’s left with nothing but time to think about it. Yet, despite this Titanic had the biggest box office viewing of all time, worldwide.

Carol Reed took the risks and came out the other side with a fantastic film. The Third Man seems to delve into different genres it has romance, mystery, tragedy, comedy and action. The storyline is fairly simple so you don’t have to work too hard to follow it. It also raises the very controversial question “Are we who we are? Or are we just what other people think of us?”