50 Book Challenge: Book 13
The Third Man and The Fallen Idol by Graham Greene.
*Warning: includes mild plot spoilers*
This beautiful little book, part of the Random House Vintage Classics series, contains the novella Greene wrote to crystallise his ideas for The Third Man film script plus a short story originally called The Basement Room. This was to form the basis of another highly successful film, The Fallen Idol, also directed by Carol Reed.
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A few weeks ago I watched The Third Man for the first time – a dreadful oversight for anyone with my professed tastes in film and books. I fell instantly in love with it and immediately declared it to be one of the best films I had ever seen. I rushed straight out to buy the novella. Points of interest include a detailed preface by Greene describing the process of writing the film script and how the various changes made between the novella and the film occurred. He’s at pains to point out that the written version of the work wasn’t any kind of holy text, to which changes had to be painfully negotiated over a period of weeks, but rather the working basis for the film. He seems to have viewed it as a kind of first draft that allowed him to solidify his ideas on characterisation, for example, in a way which would not have been possible in the clipped idiom of the screenplay. The impression he gives is of a very amicable working relationship with Reed, where his concerns as a writer were understood, and where he was happy to accept changes that would improve the finished product.
There are several significant differences in the story, including the removal of some scenes which were felt to simply slow down the action – a kidnap of Anna Schmidt by the Russian police among them. Popescu, the Romanian, first appeared as a self-righteous American by the name of Cooler but the politics of a second American bad guy apparently did not appeal to Hollywood. Harry Lime himself was originally a Brit, until Mr Orson Welles was discovered to be available for the part, when he and his unfortunate sidekick Rollo (or Holley, depending on which version we’re talking about) Martins were transformed into Americans. The story, unlike the film, is told in the first person from the point of view of Major Calloway, the British official responsible for investigating the racket in which Lime has been involved. Since he is piecing together the tale from elements being pieced together by Martins, this makes for a pretty multi-layered and involved narrative.
But, despite all these differences, the overwhelming impression is of huge similarity. Much of the film dialogue comes straight out of the novella and I found myself viewing a simultaneous mental movie replay as I was reading. To those completely uninitiated in The Third Man I would definitely suggest starting with the film and working back to the novella. The film is the most important of the two documents, the novella an extremely interesting and enlightening adjunct. But an adjunct nonetheless.
Oh, and Greene gives credit where it is due for the famous cuckoo clock line, pointing out that it was added by Welles himself. This makes perfect sense, it is such an actors’ line, and this little piece of atmospheric trivia helps to bring the book alive.
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The Fallen Idol is a different proposition. It was a complete story before the idea of it becoming a film script was ever dreamed of. It occupies much less space in the book than its commensurately more famous companion. It deals with the feelings of a small child caught up in tragic adult events and it has an impressionistic quality and a powerful sense of time and place that reminded me strongly of Virginia Woolf. It is an extremely successful piece of storytelling in its own right and apparently it has significant differences from the film of the same name – another illuminating preface by Greene explains them. It is a haunting little read and is likely to stay with you far longer than its famous counterpart. This book gains greatly by its inclusion.