Friday Noir

I started watching The Third Man last night, but didn't finish it until this evening. It’s one of those movies that I've been meaning to see for years, and once I finally do I can't believe I waited so long. So good. I would have finished it last night, and I should have since it’s only an hour and forty minutes, but I started getting nervous because I had to teach the next morning and I become miserly about my sleep when faced with the prospect of less than seven hours.

The Third Man is about an American, Holly Martins, who goes to Vienna expecting to see his friend, Harry Limes, but Holly arrives just in time for Harry’s funeral. As Holly starts investigating Harry’s death, he realizes that nothing is what it seems. Not Harry's death, or Harry himself, or the city of Vienna. Writing about it I'm reminded of Chinatown, which I just saw for the first time last week. Now that I think about it, it’s kind of strange how the city in each film—Vienna and Chinatown—is its own reality where normal rules don’t apply. Like in Chinatown, when everything went horribly awry at the end and the cop just says something to the effect of, What can you do? It’s Chinatown. My writing career reminds me of Chinatown.

Yesterday my wife picked me up at King Library, where I was working on an essay because my computer crashed. As I walked to the passenger side of the car, a gold SUV revved past like it was in a big hurry, and as we followed it down the drive it pulled over about twenty feet ahead, put on its emergency lights, and a well-dressed woman stepped out. I was really mad, because the SUV blew past approximately two feet from me, so I rolled down the window and pounded on the side of our car and yelled, “Hey—slow down!” I wanted to add, “You old bag,” but I was on campus where I work, and it seemed over the top. I could tell I startled said woman because she skipped into a faster walk when I banged on the side door, but she wasn't overly traumatized because as we rolled toward the road she peeked over her shoulder and pointed a sidewise middle finger at me before turning quickly away.

The first book I read by Graham Greene was The Heart of the Matter. I read it over the course of a day and finished it in the early hours of the morning, and when I set the book on the hardwood floor beside the mattress I remember the total surprise of the novel's emotional impact. It could have so easily been boring. But years later (I read the book in 2005) I still think back to Scobie and his secret life. I guess the book is a lot like The Third Man. Scobie died with most of his secrets hidden from even his wife, just like Holly Martins didn’t know anything about his friend Harry Lime. That seems to be a theme with Graham Greene. What do we really know about anyone?

The film dialogue is so snappy (and often funny), especially in the beginning when Holly Martins is this cocky son of a gun who's going to dig up the truth, before he realizes what a mess he's in, but what struck me about The Heart of the Matter was the unflinching honesty about human weakness. Some of my favorite passages:

pg. 71: Scobie said sharply, “Don’t talk nonsense, dear. We’d forgive most things if we knew the facts.”

pg. 71: …for the first time he realized the pain inevitable in any human relationship—pain suffered and pain inflicted. How foolish one was to be afraid of loneliness.

pg. 215: Human beings couldn’t be heroic all the time: those who surrendered everything—for God or love—must be allowed sometimes in thought to take back their surrender. So many had never committed the heroic act, however rashly. It was the act that counted.

Walking to King Library today after my office hours, I passed three women who looked and dressed much like the impatient SUV driver from yesterday. Each time I thought it was the culprit. But they all wore long trench coats, each of their faces were unnaturally tan, their short hair was feathered and gelled, and in the gray chill of a late October afternoon they all looked resolutely grim to the same degree, marching down the sidewalk, only glancing up once before our paths crossed, their faces never cracking to reveal even the most basic signs of acknowledgment, let alone recognition.