The Third Man

The Third Man is a movie made in 1949 that is based in Vienna. The story goes: Harry Lime, a resident of Vienna, invites his friend Holly Martins out to Vienna for work. Upon Holly’s arrival, he discovers that Harry Lime has died. As he tries and investigates his friend Harry’s death, he grows more and more suspicious that Harry’s death was no accident and that he was in fact murdered. Even though Holly is warned by many officials and Harry’s friends to leave town, he does not and is adamant about getting the truth about his friend’s death. Along the way, he falls for Harry’s lover, Anna, and tries to keep her from being sent back to the Russian sector of Vienna (she is Czech). Holly encounters a man on a walk and is convinced that he has run into Harry. Through his investigations, Holly finds out from Calloway, the lead detective, that Harry was involved in penicillin smuggling on the black market. Lime would attain penicillin and dilute the amount, sell it to hospitals, and the hospitals would then distribute these diluted antibiotics to patients with bacterial infections and has staged his own death. Calloway then takes Holly to the hospital to see the effects of the diluted penicillin purchased from Lime. The children are all deformed and have suffered because of the ineffectiveness of the diluted penicillin. After seeing these sick children, Martins decides to help the police lure and capture Lime in exchange for seeing that Anna gets out of Vienna safely. Anna did not want Holly’s help and tried to mess up the capture of Lime, for she still loved him despite his evil doings. In the end, the officials were able to find out that he was using the sewage system to get in and out of the different occupied zones in Vienna and shot and killed him there.
This movie was interesting to watch after familiarizing myself with most of the Vienna sites. Some sites that I recognized from the movie included: Hofburg, Café Mozart, and the Prater. Some common cultural things I saw were: the Strassenbahn, the Emperor Josef statue in the Hofburg, and Gosser beer signs. The movie was very informative historically, in the sense that the viewer was able to see the aftermath of World War II. We could see that a lot of Vienna had been destroyed. It also helped the viewer understand the implications of Vienna being split into five zones. It was also cool to see Martins face the same difficulties as we have. He didn’t speak German and most of the Austrian characters didn’t speak English. There were many instances in the film in which he had to say “I don’t understand you” or “I don’t speak German,” which is something that I have encountered a lot while on this trip. It is sometimes frustrating not being able to understand anyone, yet at the same time refreshing. The language barrier is not so bad, since luckily many of the Viennese speak flawless English. It is also interesting to see the crime and darker side of Vienna. My views of Vienna have been mostly positive, with the exception of the people being a bit rude and snooty, I have never felt unsafe walking around, except for maybe the sketchy drunk people at the Karlsplatz station.