Style and The Cold War in "The Third Man"

One of the most distinctive aspects of The Third Man is its style. Its highly stylized cinematography took inspiration from the German Expressionists of the 1920s, using techniques such as the dramatic contrast expressed in the still above. Harry Lime's smirk stands alone among the gloomy ruins of Vienna, highlighting how he transcends the misery of his surroundings and, shall we say, his full embrace of his own "will to power." The camera finds itself listing to the side much of the time and the bizarre geometries of the city clash and slice across the light and shadow, creating a city one senses has truly "lost its marbles." 

The American visitor in the film, Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotton), is a writer of romantic Western B-novels and a believer, as Roger Ebert puts it here, "in the simplified good and evil of his novels." He is a naïve fellow, totally at odds with the war-wizened denizens of the city he visits. Oddly, the film's production paralleled this divide. The American producer, David O. Selznick, most famous for romances like Gone with the Wind, wanted to film The Third Man in studio with a decidedly more upbeat tone than his British director, Carol Reed. Reed prevailed, shooting the film on location in the desolate, bombed out streets of Vienna.