This is my second and final book for this week’s 1949 Club, hosted by Simon of Stuck in a Book and Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings. I read an e-book copy of The Third Man by Graham Greene, which includes a short story, The Fallen Idol. This is just a short review with some thoughts that struck me as I read the book.
Vintage Digital/ 2010/ e-book/ Print length: 162 pages/ My own copy/ 4*
The Third Man was not intended to be a book. It was an early draft for a screenplay, commissioned in 1947 by the film producer Alexander Korda. Greene wrote it whilst he was on holiday in Italy in 1948. After the release of the film in 1949, Greene’s draft was published as a short novel, or novella, in 1950.
Description from Amazon:
The Third Man, Graham Greene’s most iconic tale, takes place in post-war Vienna, a ‘smashed dreary city’ occupied by the four Allied powers. Rollo Martins, a second-rate novelist, arrives penniless to visit his friend and hero, Harry Lime. But Harry has died in suspicious circumstances, and the police are closing in on his associates…
The Fallen Idol is the chilling story of a small boy caught up in the games that adults play. Left in the care of the butler and his wife whilst his parents go on a fortnight’s holiday, Philip realises too late the danger of lies and deceit. But the truth is even deadlier.
I’ve not seen the film and knew very little about The Third Man, apart from the fact that it’s about Harry Lime. But I’d no idea who he was, or what he did.
Vienna after the end of the Second World War is vividly described, ‘a smashed dreary city’ partitioned into four zones – in the control of Four Powers, the Russian, British, American and French, each region marked only by notice boards. Each Power was responsible for the security of the city for a month at a time. This was new information for me as I knew nothing about what had happened in Italy after the War.
The book begins as Rollo Martin, a writer of cheap American westerns, arrives in Vienna. His old school friend, Harry Lime had invited him, promising him a job. But he arrives in time for Harry’s funeral, where he meets a British military policeman Colonel Calloway, who narrates the story. Harry died in a road accident outside his apartment.
It has a terrific atmosphere throughout, classic noir, seedy, somewhat dreary and depressing. There is a enormous feeling of danger, fear and tension as Rollo tries to find out exactly how Harry had died and who was the third man who had witnessed the accident. Greene’s writing conveys a sense of the melancholy and tiredness that filled Vienna at that time.
Colonel Calloway describes it as
… a city of undignified ruins which turned that February into great glaciers of snow and ice. The Danube was a grey flat muddy river a long way off the Second Bezirk, the Russian zone where the Prater lay smashed and desolate full of weeds, only the Great Wheel revolving slowly over the foundations of merry-go-rounds like abandoned millstones, the rusting irons of smashed tanks which nobody had cleared away, the frost-nipped weeds where the snow was thin. (page 7)
And as Ian Thompson describes in his Introduction ‘Virtually every Viennese was involved in black-marketeering of one kind or another; there was not merely defeat in the former Nazi outpost, but debasement.’
I did find it confusing in places and some time I’d like to re-read it to clarify the sequence of events. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. Don’t read the Introduction by Ian Thompson before you read the book, because it gives away the plot. It compares the book and the film and gives a summary of The Fallen Idol. It is very interesting and worth reading – after reading the book.
The Fallen Idol tells the story of a small boy who was left alone in a grand London house in the care of the parents’ butler and his jealous wife. It has a tragic ending but I thought it was interesting because its seen partly through the little boy’s eyes. Like The Third Man it has a great sense of unease and dread.
Many thanks to Simon and Kaggsy for choosing 1949. I found both Brat Farrar and The Third Man give fascinating insights into what life was like in 1949!
