REUNION IN VIENNA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 803, 10 December 1954, Page 31

REUNION IN VIENNA

(CAROL REED'S The Third Man was one of the finest Britsh films ever made. The sheer power of its imagining made it an unforgettable picture of a stricken city, its fountains and cupids all bombed out, its people living only they knew how. In its widest sense it was a picture of the whole post-war world, in moral. jeopardy among the tuins of its own making, To this sad, desolate Vienna comes Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), author of many novels a long way after Zane Gray. He is a simple man, possessed of obstinate courage and loyalty to his friends. One of these is called Harry Lime, and he is going to get Holly a job. He does not appear and Holly finds himself instead at Lime’s funeral. An English major named Calloway (Anthony Ireland), who is there, offers Holly a lift and they have a few drinks together. Holly finds out that Lime is a racketeer and the lowest form of humanity in a city where everyone is a racketeer, amateur or professional, in order to live. The only difference is that the

over-eager amateur is liable to be found floating in the Danube, while the wily ones like Harry Lime are dead, buried and come alive again, At Lime’s bogus funeral, Holly sees a girl, the lonely suffering Anna (Signe Hasso), who has the misfortune to love Harry Lime for the ten per cent good that was in him and despite the ninety per cent evil, Her love, hopeless though it is, is a parable of the necessity for having faith in a society which has lost belief in almost all the old virtues and must painfully find its way back to them. How Holly joins in the chase through the sewers which ends in the death of Harry Lime makes an exciting climax to the drama. Its accompaniment is an inconsequential little half-sad, halfmerry tune which might have come from any Viennese cafe. Remember it? New York’s Theatre Guild on the Air produced this radio adaptation of Graham Greene’s script for The Third Man. It will be heard in ZB Sunday Showcase at 9.35 p.m. on December 19.