The Third Man by Graham Greene

I read this cute little paperback I got from the second hand bookstore that’s adjacent to the Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool, when I was there over the Christmas period…

The Third Man is of course not a novel, it’s a film, and famously one of the best films, directed by Carol Reed (who also directed the Obi Wan Kenobi version of Our Man In Havana (the one filmed in Castro’s newly revolutionised Cuba) and the musical Oliver!, among many other films, though no others I’ve personally seen), and starring Orson Welles and other people who aren’t famous any more…

This book, published by Faber and Faber though seemingly produced (this edition at least) as a free gift for subscribers to Sight and Sound (the British Film Institute’s long-running magazine), is difficult to date from the copyright page – there are so many years mentioned there that it’s difficult to know when and how this script – for this is what it is – was first made available for the reading public. 1968? 1974? The Revised Edition from 1984?

What we do know, then, is that the film was released in 1949, and that the script contained here is a combination of the manuscript Graham Greene handed off to the production company, as well as the shooting script Carol Reed had for the shoot when it began, and also the final edited version of the film, with this book therefore attempting to convey a) cuts made to Greene’s script prior to shooting, b) improvised or amended lines as spoken on set (essentially Orson Welles seemed to not really believe in other people’s ability to write, which is fair enough as the improvised lines (included as footnotes here) are – if not the most effective – often the most memorable, the most poetic (e.g. this line about peace and cuckoo clocks)) and c) decisions made in the editing suite…

This does lead, then, to a little bit of a mess on the page, with unclear footnotes and an overuse of square brackets, and repeated corrections given for recurring changes that were made to the script, such as – the key one – character names being different to Greene’s initial plan.

There are also issues with typesetting, lines of print being duplicated at different font sizes, and a couple of misprints that one wouldn’t normally associate with Faber…

This, then, is a lovely shoddy paperback.

It’s a lovely shoddy paperback copy of a script of a noir about a shoddy man who’s done shoddy deals, causing (spoilers for the 1949 film The Third Man follow) death and illness by not just profiteering off medical supplies in post-war Vienna, but adulterating and watering down the price-gouged medication to the point where it became ineffective…

I love this little pocket sized paperback, and I read the majority of this script on a single tube journey, crouched in the corner of a carriage between my adorable dog and a large fancy-looking though very crumpled bag that contained a cake I’d received that day as a late holiday gift…

I was glued to the page, flicking through Greene’s narrative, even though I’ve seen this film before and I’ve seen other noir films and I’ve read loaddds of noir narratives, so I know how these things go and how these things end…..

But it’s fucking gripping.

The Third Man is serious and it’s sad and it’s funny and it’s fucking serious and it’s fucking sad and it’s a howling fucking pleasure to read.

Highly recommended, tbh. Though I do like a bit of Greene!!!

–///–

Have just read about a few more of Carol Reed’s films that I haven’t seen, and though several sound fucking tedious (e.g. Charlton Heston is Michaelangelo), a couple of the other thrillery noirs he made around The Third Man sound very fucking watchable.

Guess I know what I’ll be googling when I settle in for another solo Saturday night this weekend…