by NEIL SINYARD<\/p>\n
\u201cInternational business may conduct its operations with scraps of paper, but the ink it uses is human blood.\u201d
\n(Eric Ambler)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u201cVictims? Don\u2019t be so melodramatic. Look down there. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving? […] These days, old man, nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don\u2019t, so why should we? They talk about the people and the proletariat and I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It\u2019s the same thing\u201d
\n(Harry Lime, looking down from the Great Wheel in The Third Man) <\/p><\/blockquote>\nIntroduction<\/b><\/p>\n
A year or so ago, when I was contemplating writing a book on the relatively unexplored territory of the screenwriting career of Eric Ambler, one outcome seemed certain: I would need to devote a chapter comparing Ambler with Graham Greene. The connection seemed inescapable. They were both major screenwriters who had made a significant contribution to British cinema during its heyday of popularity from the late 1940s to the end of the 1950s; they were both masters in their fictional field who, particularly during the 1930s, brought a new literary respectability to the genre of the mystery thriller; they even shared the same publishers and had coincidentally spent regular periods of residence in Switzerland. <\/p>\n
My interest was piqued still further when I recalled quotations cited in two classic works of Greene scholarship, which, in an interesting and oblique way, seemed to confirm my conviction that the parallels between Ambler and Greene were worth pursuing. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The first quotation comes from Volume One of Norman Sherry\u2019s biography, The Life of Graham Greene<\/em> (1989), where Sherry is quoting from a review of a novel published in 1951: \u201cThe cinema has taught him speed and clarity, the revealing gesture. When he generalizes it is as though a camera were taking a panning shot and drawing evidence from face after face.\u201d1<\/a><\/sup> As Sherry remarked, it could be a description of Greene\u2019s own writing style, but it is, in fact, taken from a review by Greene of Eric Ambler\u2019s novel, Judgment on Deltchev<\/em>. We know that Greene was an admirer of Ambler\u2019s work, describing him as \u201cunquestionably our best thriller writer\u201d on the cover of a compendium of Ambler\u2019s work; and including Ambler in The Spy\u2019s Bedside Book<\/em> (1957) which he compiled and edited with his brother Hugh. \u201cHe analyses danger,\u201d wrote Greene of Ambler, \u201cas carefully and seriously as other novelists analyse guilt or love.\u201d2<\/a><\/sup> His review of Judgment on Deltchev<\/em> suggests a stylistic literary kinship particularly derived from their common cinematic experience.<\/p>\n
The second quotation comes from the third edition of Quentin Falk\u2019s study of cinematic adaptations of Greene\u2019s work, Travels in Greeneland<\/em> (2000), when he draws attention to an observation from the Observer<\/em>\u2019s film critic, Philip French made on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of The Third Man<\/em> in 1999. French had been musing on why Greene had always expressed a preference for The Fallen Idol<\/em> over the more highly esteemed The Third Man<\/em>, the reason being, Greene said, that it was more a writer\u2019s film whereas The Third Man<\/em> was more a director\u2019s movie. French suspected there was more to it than that and that Greene was distancing himself from \u201cthis masterpiece\u201d because he was aware that, in terms of plot and character, The Third Man<\/em> owed something to Eric Ambler\u2019s 1939 novel, The Mask of Dimitrios<\/em>, most notably its central situation of a main character, presumed dead, who turns out two thirds of the way through the story to be very much alive. French suggested further points of contact which I will be exploring in due course, but he seemed surprised that few commentators had picked up the comparison. When he had once asked Ambler if he had noticed the resemblance, Ambler replied drily; \u201cYes, I have.\u201d3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
It should be emphasized that I am not talking about direct or conscious influence here, but more about parallels and connections between two writers who might be considered, in a sense, kindred spirits. I have talked in a similar way about parallels between the work of Greene and Alfred Hitchcock, even though Greene\u2019s film criticism had a curious blind-spot about the merits of Hitchcock\u2019s movies.4<\/a><\/sup> Ambler had an even more direct contact with Hitchcock. He not only wrote two episodes for Hitchcock\u2019s television series, but he married Hitchcock\u2019s long-time assistant and later producer of his tv shows, Joan Harrison, with Hitchcock being their (by all accounts, very unruly) best man.5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Parallel lives and literary connections<\/strong><\/p>\n
Before exploring the cinematic and literary connections in greater detail, I think it might be useful to sketch in a bit of biographical background. Incidentally, both wrote two volumes of autobiography, the second of which was even less forthcoming than the first and the first each having titles that suggested something short of complete self-revelation: in Greene\u2019s case, A Sort of Life<\/em> (1971); in Ambler\u2019s Here Lies<\/em> (1985). I think it was John le Carr\u00e9 who said of Greene that he never disclosed the whole truth about himself but only gave you a cover story, in the spirit of someone who sometimes covers his tracks with the truth only because it is easier to remember. Ambler put things more bluntly. \u201cOnly an idiot believes he can write the truth about himself,\u201d he declared.6<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n
Both were born and died in the same decade: Greene (1904-1991) at the age of 87; Ambler (1909-1999) at the age of 89. Their family backgrounds were very different, Greene being the son of a headmaster, Ambler the son of parents who were partners in a successful music hall variety act. Both were psychoanalyzed in their youth and both early on seemed to conclude that England was a dull place to live, finding inspiration and excitement in foreign locations.<\/p>\n
They each discovered at an early age a love of reading and a passion for writing. For Greene a decisive influential text was Marjorie Bowen\u2019s novel, The Viper of Milan<\/em> (1906), a deceptively escapist period novel which for Greene conjured up a world of tragedy, treachery and terror. \u201cShe had given me my pattern,\u201d he was to write in his essay \u2018The Lost Childhood\u2019, \u201cperfect evil walking in the world where perfect good can never walk again, and only the pendulum ensures that after all in the end justice is done.\u201d7<\/a><\/sup> The whole world of The Third Man<\/em> is evoked in that description; the Great Wheel of Vienna seems almost like the Wheel of History tilting tentatively and only temporarily towards a more optimistic future. For Ambler, it was his encounter, at the age of fifteen, with Dostoyevsky\u2019s Crime and Punishment<\/em> and, being, as he wrote, \u201cshattered by it. Wrapped in the mantle of Raskolnikov, I used to go for long, gloomy walks in the more depressing quarters of London, looking for fallen women whom I could salute, though from a respectable distance, in the name of suffering humanity.\u201d8<\/a><\/sup> It led to his conviction that there is a potential policeman or criminal in every human being. The Dostoyevskian influence can even be felt as late as 1963 when The Ability to Kill<\/em> was published, his macabre and even morbid collection of essays about notorious murder cases, narrated in that characteristic low-key prose which in his novels, as Gavin Lambert remarked, often conveys \u201ca high state of panic\u201d.9<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n
Over the years they developed a writing routine that was quite similar. They both would draft out their work in longhand. Greene would customarily stop when he had written 500 words; and Ambler was to remark that 500 words a day \u201cwas good going.\u201d10<\/a><\/sup> Their literary reputations were established in the 1930s, with both ending the decade on a high note: in Greene\u2019s case, with two masterpieces, Brighton Rock<\/em> (1938) and The Power and the Glory<\/em> (1940); and in Ambler\u2019s case, the two novels on which his literary fame and prestige largely rest, The Mask of Dimitrios<\/em> (1939) and Journey into Fear<\/em> (1940). Although there is no evidence of conscious borrowing, there seems sometimes an intriguing crossover of stimuli. Ambler uses as epigram a quotation from Dryden to launch Cause for Alarm<\/em> (1937); Greene does likewise for The Power and the Glory<\/em>. There is a similarity of titles: Journey into Fear<\/em> (Ambler); The Ministry of Fear<\/em> (Greene, 1943). \u201cDangerous\u201d is one of Greene\u2019s key words, whether it be found in the lines from Robert Browning\u2019s poem Bishop Blougram\u2019s Apology that he said was at the basis of all his work (\u201cOur interest\u2019s on the dangerous edge of things\u201d) or his comment that it was the \u201cdangerous third martini\u201d that prompted him to propose himself as film critic to the editor of The Observer<\/em> in 1935. Ambler describes Dimitrios\u2019s \u201cbrown, anxious\u201d eyes as \u201cdangerous\u201d and one of his early novels has the title, Uncommon Danger<\/em> (1937). \u201cWould they ever cross the border?\u201d says a character in Uncommon Danger<\/em>; and crossing the border is a main theme of Greene\u2019s great short story of the following year, \u2018Across the Bridge\u2019. <\/p>\n
Given that they were both working within the thriller genre, such coincidences are perhaps not surprising in themselves or significant until one considers what each novelist has done with the ideas. Nevertheless, it seems to me noteworthy when the imagery one of them uses prompts a memory of something in the work of the other. For example, we know now the symbolic importance to Greene of the green baize door which led to a passage by his father\u2019s study, and which signified not only the dividing line between home and school, but also between safety and anxiety, for the other side of the door opened onto an alien world of fear and hate.11<\/a><\/sup> Ambler\u2019s image in Journey into Fear<\/em> for a similar kind of realization, where a zone of comfort leads to one of chaos, is \u201cthe world beyond the door, the world in which you recognized the ape beneath the velvet\u201d.12<\/a><\/sup> This is the moment when three shots are fired at the armaments engineer Graham as he opens his hotel room door; and suddenly he is aware of a world of terror outside of the orderly and comfortable terrain in which he has hitherto complacently moved. When Ambler talks in Epitaph for a Spy<\/em> of \u201cmankind fighting to save itself from the primaeval ooze that welled from its own subconscious being\u201d and then later in Journey into Fear<\/em> refers to \u201cthe insanity of the subconscious mind\u2026the awe-inspired insanity of the primaeval swamp\u201d,13<\/a><\/sup> I cannot help mentally fast-forwarding to Greene\u2019s fascination with the Viennese sewers in The Third Man<\/em>, this slippery underworld through which Harry Lime moves, and which could symbolize the subconscious mind of Holly Martins, who has a guilty admiration and envy of his best friend\u2019s outlawed vitality that must be rooted out and destroyed in a final and deadly underground confrontation. Greene has always – and rightly – been admired for the prophetic quality of his novels, his nose for the next political trouble spot, which prompted his friend Alec Guinness to remark that when he heard that Greene was going off to visit some part of the globe, he would avoid that place like the plague: he thought some revolution or war would be bound to erupt soon. The Quiet American<\/em> is the quintessential example of that. Ambler also had his impressively prophetic side. One would struggle to find a more chillingly prophetic sentence in all 1930s literature than the one in Ambler\u2019s 1936 novel, The Dark Frontier<\/em>: \u201cNever does a man\u2019s knowledge advance so rapidly as when he is creating a weapon of destruction.\u201d14<\/a><\/sup> In a few years\u2019 time that knowledge will have advanced the world into a new nuclear and Cold War age that could imperil its very survival.<\/p>\n
The cinematic connections<\/strong> <\/p>\n
The connections between the two authors\u2019 engagement with the film industry seem alternately minor and substantial. Both made a solitary personal appearance in a film: Ambler as a Bren Gun instructor in The New Lot<\/em> (1942), Greene as a retired businessman in Francois Truffaut\u2019s Day for Night<\/em> (1973). Each had the distinction of being nominated for an Oscar for best adapted screenplay: Greene for The Fallen Idol<\/em>, Ambler for The Cruel Sea<\/em> (1953). A more substantial connection is that both collaborated on three films with the director Carol Reed. During Greene\u2019s period as film critic in the 1930s, Reed was one of the very few English directors whose work he had consistently championed. Their three films together \u2013 The Fallen Idol<\/em>, The Third Man<\/em> and Our Man in Havana<\/em> (1959) – constitute one of the most highly regarded writer\/director partnerships in the history of British film; and Greene was to dedicate the publication of his novella The Third Man<\/em>, which provided the basis for the screenplay, to Carol Reed \u201cin admiration and affection\u201d. A good friend of Reed also, Ambler had a more quirky and unorthodox collaboration. His first screenwriting experience was for Carol Reed\u2019s Army Film Unit, where they worked together on The New Lot<\/em>, which was intended as a recruiting film for the Army and an introduction to basic training. This was expanded into the feature film starring David Niven, The Way Ahead<\/em> (1944), which, with Went the Day Well?<\/em> (1942), seems to me arguably the best British war film made during the actual war years. Their third collaboration was an altogether more troubled affair, for they were involved in MGM\u2019s ill-fated remake of Mutiny on the Bounty<\/em> (1962), which essentially involved their endeavor to make a coherent and entertaining movie whilst satisfying the whims of its temperamental star, Marlon Brando. Years earlier, in a lecture entitled \u2018The Novelist and the Film-Makers\u2019, Ambler had defined the central issue confronting any screenwriter, as being \u201cthe problem of collaboration without loss of self-respect\u201d.15<\/a><\/sup> After fourteen re-writes had failed to satisfy the film\u2019s star, Ambler resolved to salvage his self-respect by leaving the production altogether and Reed followed shortly afterwards. Less original and imaginative a screenwriter than Greene perhaps, Ambler was nevertheless to demonstrate a particular facility for literate and well-crafted adaptations of popular English novelists in the realist tradition, such as his adaptation of H G Wells\u2019s The Passionate Friends<\/em> (1948) for David Lean, and his version for Ronald Neame of Arnold Bennett\u2019s The Card<\/em> (1952), which Ambler mentions in his autobiography as being his father\u2019s favorite novel. As well as the Oscar nomination for The Cruel Sea<\/em>, Ambler was to be nominated for British Academy Awards for The Purple Plain<\/em> (1954), which its director Robert Parrish thought improved on the HE Bates novel, and for Roy Baker\u2019s film, A Night to Remember<\/em> (1958), which still looks the best film yet made of the Titanic disaster. <\/p>\n
Ambler\u2019s lecture on the novelist and the film makers had originally been given in 1951 at the invitation of Greene\u2019s publisher friend, A. S. Frere to the Sunday Times Book Exhibition and delivered later that year to the Edinburgh Film Festival. It offered a wise and whimsical fantasy about the likely fate awaiting a young and enthusiastic novelist who has excitedly sold his novel to the movies but then must look on askance and even aghast as his precious work becomes progressively altered to suit the commercial imperatives of the medium. Ambler is pragmatic about this process. After all, he says, \u201cmost writers from other media go to work in the film industry in the hope of making a lot of money in a comparatively short time.\u201d16<\/a><\/sup> There is nothing wrong in that, of course, because it means they will be able to continue writing novels; and it still requires them to fulfil their obligations to the project with all the diligence and professionalism at their command. The novelist must be under no illusions, however, about what is involved. \u201cScreenwriting has very little to do with writing as a novelist understands the term,\u201d Ambler argues. \u201cThe only common denominators are a sense of story construction… and the ability to create characters who breathe.\u201d17<\/a><\/sup> The distinction Ambler makes between writing a novel and writing for the screen underscores one significant difference between Ambler\u2019s approach and that of Greene: namely, Ambler\u2019s policy of never adapting his own novels for the screen, for they involved completely different approaches and techniques. This was in sharp contrast to Greene, who, after what he saw as his disastrous attempt to adapt John Galsworthy\u2019s play \u2018The First and the Last\u2019 in Twenty-One Days<\/em> (1937), vowed in future only to adapt his own work for the screen, a rule he kept, except for the solitary (and frustratingly unexplained) exception of his adaptation of G. B. Shaw\u2019s Saint Joan<\/em> (1957) for Otto Preminger. <\/p>\n
In 1958 Greene was to write his own essay on the same theme, entitled \u2018The Novelist and the Cinema – A Personal View\u2019. Like Ambler, he expressed a general gratitude towards the cinema in the contribution it has made to a novelist\u2019s survival; in his case, not so much in writing for the screen but selling the rights to others for his novels to be filmed. \u201cIt is better to sell outright,\u201d he wrote, \u201cand not to connive any further than you have to at a massacre.\u201d18<\/a><\/sup> The book would probably have a longer life, he reasoned, and the money he made from a film version would enable him to carry on writing. The \u201cmassacres\u201d he mainly deplored were those films which reversed the meaning of his originals: as examples, he would single out particularly John Ford\u2019s film, The Fugitive<\/em> (1947), his version of The Power and the Glory<\/em>, and Joseph L Mankiewicz\u2019s The Quiet American<\/em> (1958), neither of which he seems to have seen but which he concluded, from reports he had read, were travesties of his intentions.19<\/a><\/sup> Worth recommending also, for a more balanced assessment than Greene\u2019s, is Andrei Gorzo\u2019s perceptive and judicious analysis of Mankiewicz\u2019s film of The Quiet American<\/em> in A Sort of Newsletter<\/em>, February 2021, pp. 2-7.)) Like Greene, Ambler disliked nearly all the films made from his work. Probably the most successful was Jules Dassin\u2019s heist movie, Topkapi<\/em> (1965), adapted from his novel, The Light of Day<\/em> (1962), and which at least won a best supporting actor Oscar for his great friend, Peter Ustinov. An adaptation of Journey into Fear<\/em> (1942) was, in Ambler\u2019s phrase, \u201cmaster-minded\u201d by Orson Welles, who was a great fan of Ambler\u2019s writing, but was directed by Norman Foster and in the end bore little relation to the novel. Jean Negulesco\u2019s film of The Mask of Dimitrios<\/em> (1944) was an attempt to cash in on the success of John Huston\u2019s film of Dashiell Hammett\u2019s The Maltese Falcon<\/em> (1941) and similarly featured Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet. The experience of watching it gave Ambler stomach cramps; and although the film has gathered a following as a well-executed mystery of mood and atmosphere, it and the novel were never mentioned, in terms of theme or achievement, in connection with The Third Man<\/em>. Until Philip French, that is.<\/p>\n
Dimitrios and Lime<\/strong><\/p>\n
Ambler\u2019s preferred title for his novel had always been A Coffin for Dimitrios<\/em>. One surmises that the publishers might have thought it too downbeat, but for Ambler, it would have concealed for longer the twist in the tale: that, just as the body in Harry Lime\u2019s coffin is not Lime\u2019s but that of the hospital\u2019s doctor, Joseph Harbin, so the body in Dimitrios\u2019s coffin is not that of Dimitrios but of his expendable criminal associate, Manus Visser. As Philip French went on to argue, the connection between Ambler\u2019s novel and The Third Man<\/em> was not simply confined to the two charismatic criminals at their core, but to their other main characters, both of whom are writers of popular lowbrow novels (Greene\u2019s Holly Martins writes westerns, Ambler\u2019s Charles Latimer writes detective stories) who discover that there is more excitement in pursuing a real-life adventure mystery. With his admiration for Ambler, Orson Welles is likely to have noticed the similarities and, for that matter, so might Carol Reed, whose opening narration for The Third Man<\/em>, as French noted, begins: \u201cI never knew the old Vienna before the war – Constantinople suited me better,\u201d which is where the narrative of Mask of Dimitrios<\/em> begins also.<\/p>\n
On a visit to Turkey, a university lecturer in political economy and writer of popular detective novels such as The Bloody Shovel<\/em>, Charles Latimer is introduced to an admirer of his, the head of the Turkish secret police, Colonel Haki, who wonders if he is interested in real murderers. He starts telling him the story of a man named Dimitrios, whose murdered body has just been fished out of the Bosphorus and who, for the last fifteen years or so, had been an international criminal of legendary status for his involvement in crimes ranging from robbery, murder and drugs smuggling to sex trafficking, spying and political assassination. Latimer becomes obsessed with finding out more about Dimitrios and, to this end, begins to track down and interview people who knew him and, in some cases, were former associates. The structure has sometimes been thought to have influenced that of Orson Welles\u2019s Citizen Kane<\/em> (1941), which has also begun with the death of a larger-than- life character and which has then been followed by an investigation and interrogation of people who knew him, gradually building up a character portrait based on the sum of their different perceptions and perspectives. As Latimer proceeds, he keeps encountering an individual called Peters who seems to have his own agenda regarding the investigation into Dimitrios\u2019s past. There is something disquieting about Peters. On their first meeting, Latimer is reminded of \u201ca high church priest he had known in England who had been unfrocked for embezzling the altar fund\u201d.20<\/a><\/sup> On further acquaintance, he will notice \u201can edge to his husky voice that made Latimer think of a small boy pulling the legs off flies\u201d;21<\/a><\/sup> and Peters\u2019 smile with his brilliant false teeth is \u201cas if some obscene plant had turned to the sun\u201d.22<\/a><\/sup> It will transpire that Peters is seeking revenge on Dimitrios and knows something that Latimer does not: namely, that the body in the morgue which Latimer saw was not that of Dimitrios and that Dimitrios is still very much alive.<\/p>\n
When one recalls Greene\u2019s high praise for Ambler, it seems certain that he would have read The Mask of Dimitrios<\/em> and inwardly absorbed some of its contents, for, as well as the central twist, there are incidental details which will occur in modified form in The Third Man<\/em>. Indeed, Ambler even uses the phrase \u201cthe third man\u201d at one point about one of the intermediaries involved in a drugs operation that had been masterminded by Dimitrios.23<\/a><\/sup> The babble of foreign languages around Latimer, which sometimes confuse him, anticipates similar situations experienced by Holly Martins during Greene\u2019s story. One of the characters whom Latimer locates, Grodek, is identified by his inordinate fondness for cats;24<\/a><\/sup> and, of course, it is a favourite cat that will first disclose the presence of Harry Lime in The Third Man<\/em>. \u201cI have, I know, done things of which I have been ashamed\u201d, Peters tells Latimer at one point;25<\/a><\/sup> one of Lime\u2019s associates, Kurtz will make a similar disclosure when he first meets Holly Martins (\u201cI have done things that would have seemed unthinkable before the war\u201d). Ambler\u2019s imagery sometimes has the evocative pithiness of Greene. The \u201cwatchful repose\u201d on Colonel Haki\u2019s face reminds Latimer of \u201ca very old and experienced cat watching a very young and inexperienced mouse\u201d.26<\/a><\/sup> One of Latimer\u2019s contacts, Irana Preveza tells him that Dimitrios\u2019s eyes \u201cmade you think of a doctor\u2019s eyes when he is doing something to you that hurts.\u201d27<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n
The central comparison is that between Dimitrios and Lime. If Lime is the logical and consistent product of a fallen post-war world (amoral, cynical, indifferent to the suffering of humanity, governed only by motives of self-interest and greed), Dimitrios is similarly representative of the spiritual, moral and political degeneracy that has led to this genocidal war in the first place. (Ambler will even deploy the word \u201cholocaust\u201d.28<\/a><\/sup> ) There is an extraordinary passage in Ambler\u2019s novel when Latimer is still absorbing the news that Dimitrios is alive; and aligning this information with what he has learnt about the man. \u201cIf there were<\/em> such a thing as Evil,\u201d he reflects, \u201cthen this man…\u201d; but he stops this thought in mid-flow and carries on:<\/p>\n
But it was useless to try to explain him in terms of Good and Evil. They were no more than baroque abstractions. Good Business and Bad Business were the elements in the new theology. Dimitrios was not evil. He was logical and consistent: as logical and consistent in the European jungle as the poison gas called Lewisite and the shattered bodies of children killed in the bombardment of an open town. The logic of Michelangelo\u2019s David, Beethoven\u2019s quartets and Einstein\u2019s physics have been replaced by that of The Stock Exchange Year Book<\/em> and Hitler\u2019s Mein Kampf<\/em>.29<\/a><\/sup> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In its way, and for its time, Latimer\u2019s reflection seems to me as remarkable as Harry Lime\u2019s immortal \u201ccuckoo-clock speech\u201d in The Third Man<\/em> in its attempt to define the cock-eyed state of the world. When Latimer later communicates what he has learnt from his quest to his journalist friend Marukakis, the latter wonders whether it is possible to explain a character like Dimitrios or simply turn away disgusted and defeated. \u201cSpecial sorts of conditions must exist for the creation of the special sort of criminal that he typified,\u201d he suggests. \u201cAll I do know is that while might is right, while chaos and anarchy masquerade as order and enlightenment, those conditions will obtain.\u201d30<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Do those words resonate today? I found re-reading The Mask of Dimitrios<\/em> a rewarding but unnerving experience, partly because Dimitrios now looks such a modern figure. Harry Lime might have been, in Major Calloway\u2019s words, \u201cabout the worst racketeer who ever made a dirty living in this city\u201d, but Dimitrios is an insidious international bandit; an entrepreneur and puppet-master behind the scenes who manipulates the links between businesses and politicians; a man who \u201ccould preserve a picture of distinguished respectability\u201d31<\/a><\/sup> and is on the Board of Directors of an organization called the Eurasian Credit Fund (the equivalent of a multi-national corporation of today) whose reach and influence extend world-wide into all kinds of significant and murky spheres and events. Anton Karas could write a jaunty theme to capture the sardonic swagger behind the villainy of a Harry Lime, but I think he would have been hard pressed to come up with something similar for a sinister character like Dimitrios. His actions have no boundaries of shame or conscience or moral integrity, and adherence to the law is something entirely outside of his consideration. He knows exactly what he is doing and, because he is doing it, he reasons it therefore cannot be wrong. What motivates him? Peters will have the answer to that. \u201cHe wanted money and he wanted power,\u201d he tells Latimer. \u201cJust those two things, as much as he could get.\u201d32<\/a><\/sup> One would not need to look very far for contemporary equivalents nor be surprised by his explanation for what finally brings about his downfall: in a word \u201cstupidity\u201d; as he says, \u201cIf it is not one\u2019s own, it is the stupidity of others\u201d.33<\/a><\/sup> In his final communication with Latimer, Marukakis is describing political tensions between his country Bulgaria and Yugoslavia which seem to him utterly absurd but, because of the stream of propaganda, could lead to war. \u201dIf such things were not so dangerous one would laugh,\u201d he says. \u201cBut one recognizes the technique. Such propaganda always begins with words, but soon it proceeds to deeds. When there are no facts to support lies, facts must be made.\u201d34<\/a><\/sup> For me, that last sentence is redolent of the politics of 2021, never mind 1939.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/strong> <\/p>\n
Although Ambler\u2019s post-war novels do not achieve the same level of literary eminence as Greene\u2019s, they are still well worth investigating, not least because of their Greene connections. There is an explicit reference to The Quiet American<\/em> in Ambler\u2019s Passage of Arms<\/em> (1959) when a guide says to the hero, an American engineer Greg Nilsen, \u201cNow I show you where Quiet American makes bomb explosion\u201d,35<\/a><\/sup> and is not to be dissuaded even when it is pointed out to him that Greene was writing a work of fiction not fact. In his fine critical study of Ambler, Peter Lewis has pointed out more parallels between the two novelists, as, for example, in a later novel like Ambler\u2019s Doctor Frigo<\/em> (1974), which reminds Lewis of The Honorary Consul<\/em> (1973) in terms of setting and seems to anticipate The Human Factor<\/em> (1978) in terms of theme. Ambler\u2019s droll essay \u2018Spy-Haunts of the World\u2019, which includes a list of ten questions which could help one identify a spy, would make an amiable companion piece to Our Man in Havana<\/em>.36<\/a><\/sup> My impression is that they never saw each other as rivals so much as literary practitioners working within a tradition laid down by John Buchan and later pursued by writers such as John le Carr\u00e9 and Len Deighton, and which they pursued in their own distinctive and individual ways.<\/p>\n
Reviewing Ambler\u2019s The Intercom Conspiracy<\/em> (1969) in the Washington Post<\/em>, the critic J. W. Anderson wrote that \u201cAmbler deserves to be considered a major novelist by any standard; had he chosen another subject [i.e. something other than the thriller], he would no doubt have been installed long since in the required reading lists for college English majors.\u201d37<\/a><\/sup> As David Lodge pointed out in his Foreword to the collection of essays, Dangerous Edges of Graham Greene<\/em>, the same situation seemed until recently to have been true of Graham Greene, who, though widely read, was rarely considered to be of sufficient stature to figure on the syllabus of a University English Department: too accessible perhaps, and working in a popular genre that was not quite academically respectable.38<\/a><\/sup> A Festival in celebration of his work, that is still going strong after more than twenty years and has attracted leading scholars from all over the globe, has knocked that perception of Greene\u2019s literary status on the head. Has a similar commemoration been created for Eric Ambler? I don\u2019t know, but I would like to think so; and a festival devoted to his masterpiece The Mask of Dimitrios<\/em> would be a thrilling place to start.<\/p>\n
Norman Sherry, The Life of Graham Greene<\/em>, p. 415. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>
Quoted in Gavin Lambert, The Dangerous Edge<\/em> (Barrie & Jenkins Ltd., 1975), p. 121. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>
Quentin Falk, Travels in Greeneland<\/em>, p. 69. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>
I elaborate on this comparison in my chapter \u2018Poets of Criminality and Conscience: Greene and Hitchcock\u2019 in Graham Greene: A Literary Life<\/em> (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 96-108; and in \u2018The Strange Case of Graham Greene and Alfred Hitchcock\u2019 in Strand Magazine<\/em>, Feb-May 2004, pp. 44-48. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>
For a full account of the incident, see Charlotte Chandler\u2019s biography of Alfred Hitchcock, It\u2019s Only a Movie<\/em> (Simon & Shuster, 2005), p.233. Hitchcock had arranged an elaborate reception for the married couple at Chasen\u2019s, which featured an 18-course dinner, with food flown in from all corners of the world and drinks to accompany every course. By the time he was due to deliver his best man\u2019s speech, Hitchcock seemed thoroughly inebriated, swaying from side to side, almost falling over, and speaking incoherently, to the embarrassment of the guests. Suddenly at the very end of the speech, he stood up straight, looked at the audience, and said in perfectly spoken English without a hint of having had a drop to drink, \u201cI do hope they\u2019ll be very happy.\u201d In this context, it might be remembered that another thing Greene and Hitchcock had in common was a fondness for practical jokes. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>
Eric Ambler, Here Lies<\/em> (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1985), p. 18. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>
Graham Greene, Collected Essays<\/em> (Penguin, 1970), p. 17. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>
Eric Ambler, The Ability to Kill<\/em> (Bodley Head, 1963), p. 81. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>
Lambert, p. 116. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>
Ambler, The Ability to Kill<\/em>, p. 128. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>
For an elaboration of this idea, see my chapter \u2018The Green Baize Door\u2019 in Graham Greene: A Literary Life<\/em>, pp. 86-95. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>
Quoted in Lambert, p. 119. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>
Cited in Valentine Cunningham\u2019s British Writers of the Thirties<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 75. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>
Cited in Peter Lewis\u2019s Eric Ambler: A Literary Biography<\/em> (Continuum, 1990), p. 50. ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>
Ambler, The Ability to Kill<\/em>, p. 199.