{"id":585,"date":"2019-08-31T06:00:40","date_gmt":"2019-08-31T05:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/?p=585"},"modified":"2024-10-17T07:12:12","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T06:12:12","slug":"limelight-in-vienna-some-notes-on-british-cinemas-most-charismatic-villain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/neilsinyard.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/?p=585","title":{"rendered":"LIMELIGHT IN VIENNA: some notes on British cinema\u2019s most charismatic villain"},"content":{"rendered":"

by NEIL SINYARD<\/p>\n

\"\"To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the release of Carol Reed\u2019s The Third Man<\/em> and the 20th anniversary of its being voted the best British film of the century in a British Film Institute poll, I want to offer some reflections on the film and particularly on the character of Harry Lime, who, as played by Orson Welles, is assuredly one of the cinema\u2019s most charismatic villains. A remarkable aspect of Lime\u2019s cinematic durability is that he is only on screen for around 8 minutes or so. My focus will be on those scenes in which he appears and the reasons for their impact. To begin with, however, I wish to ruminate on one of his most striking features: his name.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s in a name?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"In Ways of Escape<\/em>, Graham Greene mentioned some of the symbolic interpretations which had been offered about the names of the two main characters of his screenplay, Harry Lime and Holly Martins: for example, how the former had been linked to the lime tree in Sir James Frazer\u2019s classic study of pagan mythology, The Golden Bough<\/em> (1922), and how Holly was clearly associated with Christmas, so symbolically they represented a clash between paganism and Christianity. Greene could offer a much simpler explanation for what he had in mind:<\/p>\n

The truth is I wanted for my \u2018villain\u2019 a name natural and yet disagreeable, and to me Lime represented the quicklime in which murderers were said to be buried. As for Holly, it was because my first choice of name Rollo had not met with the approval of Joseph Cotten. So much for symbols.1<\/a><\/sup> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"However, it is worth noting that a character\u2019s name in The Third Man<\/em>, like his or her nationality, is a very slippery business in what is an extremely slippery film (in terms of its narrative development, its camera style, and even its streets, which seem to gleam with wetness although it never rains). Holly was originally Rollo but is sometimes called Harry by Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli), who is supposedly Austrian but is actually Czech, so one could surmise that Schmidt is not her real name.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"The British Chief of Police, Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) is mistakenly called Callahan by Holly (the name probably derives from the head of the British Military Police at that time, Galloway) but Calloway is also the name of the crooked financier of one of Greene\u2019s short stories \u2018Across the Bridge\u2019 (1938) which concludes with one of his most potent phrases – \u201cthe baseless optimism that is worse than hopeless despair\u201d – which seems to predict the folly of appeasement and the onset of war. In The Third Man<\/em>, we are amidst the rubble of Vienna after World War Two, and Holly will encounter a sinister Austrian doctor called Dr Winkle (Erich Ponto) whose name Holly will mispronounce as \u201cwinkle\u201d. The film is a veritable miasma of unstable identity in a city of fluid nationalities and borders and even more flexible morality. As one of Lime\u2019s shady associates, \u2018Baron\u2019 Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch), tells Holly: \u201cI tell you, I have done things that would have been unthinkable before the war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"Although Greene indicated that the name of Holly for his main character was inspired by the 19th century American poet Thomas Holley Chivers, who was essentially a figure of fun (Greene wanted the name to be absurd and at one stage Anna comments directly on how silly it is), it has been suggested that the actual character of Holly Martins was based on the American screenwriter and producer Robert Buckner as an act of retaliation for Buckner\u2019s screen adaptation of Greene\u2019s novel The Confidential Agent<\/em>, which had been filmed by Herman Shumlin in 1945. Buckner had been the screenwriter on a number of westerns, including The Oklahoma Kid<\/em> (1939), and Holly Martins writes westerns, one of which is called \u2018Oklahoma Kid\u2019, which \u2018Baron\u2019 Kurtz displays on his first meeting with him and which Major Calloway later tells Holly he has read with some pleasure. Greene might have been having a private joke at Buckner\u2019s expense (he was a great practical joker), but I don\u2019t think he was after revenge. After all, he rallied to the defence of Lauren Bacall\u2019s much-criticised performance in that film, and in general thought The Confidential Agent<\/em> perhaps the best American film adaptation of his work, far surpassing the endeavours of more prestigious Hollywood directors, such as Fritz Lang (Ministry of Fear<\/em> (1944)) John Ford (The Fugitive<\/em> (1947), based on The Power and the Glory<\/em>), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (The Quiet American<\/em> (1958)) and George Cukor (Travels with my Aunt<\/em> (1972)). He might also have been pondering \u2018Holly\u2019 as a diminutive of \u2018Hollywood\u2019, and thinking wryly of those bizarre story conferences about The Third Man<\/em> that he and Carol Reed had shared with Hollywood mogul, David O Selznick, which on one occasion seemed destined to be endlessly protracted until Selznick realised he was thinking of another film entirely. In his Preface to The Pleasure Dome<\/em> (1972) Greene recalled, among other things, Selznick\u2019s dislike of the film\u2019s title (\u201cWho the hell is going to a film called The Third Man<\/em>?\u201d he grumbled), and his preferred choice of Noel Coward in the role of Harry Lime (both Reed and Greene were appalled).2<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n

But what about the name \u2018Harry Lime\u2019? \u2018Harry\u2019 is a good English name with Shakespearean connections (\u201cPray God for Harry, England and St George!\u201d), but it also has connotations of to \u2018harry\u2019, as in \u2018harass\u2019, or \u2018hurry\u2019, for a character who is elusive, sometimes threatening, and always on the move. Lime is a shade of green, or what Peter Conrad called \u201can acid variant of the novelist\u2019s name.\u201d3<\/a><\/sup> Another connection between Greene and Lime is obliquely suggested by an interesting comment about the novelist which is cited in Ian Thomson\u2019s book Articles of Faith<\/em>, where Tom Burns is quoted as saying that, when Greene entered a room, he \u201cseemed to me to have a spotlight on him\u201d.4<\/a><\/sup> Think of Harry Lime\u2019s first entrance in The Third Man<\/em>: arguably the most dramatic spotlit entrance of any film character.<\/p>\n

\"\"The name resonates in other ways. It is only one letter short of \u2018smile\u2019; and he is the only character in the whole film who really smiles. (When anyone else does, or laughs, it is so remarkable an occurrence that it usually attracts comment. Anna has only two laughs in her, she says; and Holly seems almost terminally morose, a potentially monotonous mood which, it should be said, Joseph Cotten invests with a good deal of variety and charm.) \u2018Lime\u2019 is also only one letter short of \u2018slime\u2019, as if presaging that final chase in the sewers. It is a clever name because it is such a fizzy concoction of \u2018sly\u2019, \u2018slime\u2019, \u2018smile\u2019 and \u2018lie\u2019, all of which make up the cocktail of his character. And the film certainly ensures that we don\u2019t forget it, or him: the name is mentioned twice in the prologue, and ten times in the opening ten minutes, and he dominates every scene in the picture, whether he is in it or not. His absence is always present; indeed it ensures the film always seems to have a spring in its step and a surprise round every corner. \u201cLime, Harry Lime,\u201d says Holly in the opening scene when he gets off the train and is explaining the purpose of his visit to Vienna, \u201cThought he\u2019d be here to meet me.\u201d But he isn\u2019t, for Lime is a will o\u2019 the wisp who is not where Holly thought he would be nor is he where Calloway thinks he is. \u201cCould you tell me.. is this …?\u201d says Holly at the graveyard when wondering whose funeral service it is \u201cA fellow called Lime\u201d, says Calloway, dispassionately. But it is not quite, for someone else is in that coffin; although even when he is supposed to be dead, his spirit seems to walk abroad and every character seems obsessed with him.<\/p>\n

All of this mystery and mythologizing is setting the makers of the film a huge challenge, because when he does eventually appear, it must deliver on that promise. It is similar to a Hitchcock suspense sequence: when you have worked an audience up to such a pitch of expectation, you have to top that expectation with something extra in order to avoid anti-climax. After all, an audience knows that Orson Welles will appear sometime in the film, because his name is on the credits. When Carol Reed told Welles apologetically that he would not appear until halfway through, Welles replied: \u201cCould you make it two-thirds?\u201d He might well have been thinking of something like the carefully delayed entrance for maximum effect of the character of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad\u2019s novella, Heart of Darkness<\/em>, a work very close to Welles\u2019s own heart (he had adapted it for radio, and it was intended to be his first film before location and financial complications forced its cancellation: nevertheless, Citizen Kane<\/em> was to show clear traces of its influence.)5<\/a><\/sup> And it is not just a case of when the character is going to appear; it is also how<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Extract 1: Enter Harry Lime<\/strong><\/p>\n