The Third Man (and Still Dots) ends with one of the most remarkable final images in the history of cinema, an overwhelming fusion of form and content that makes clear just how irrevocably Holly Martins’ life has changed. Jeremy charted this solemn transformation on Tuesday, tracing all of Holly’s medium-shots to close-ups throughout our series and discovering a man whose sense of morality has been…

For this, our last close-up of Holly and our second last post in this series, I thought it apropos to look through the close-ups we have seen of him so far. If, as Charlie Chaplin is quoted as saying “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot,” then perhaps this […] For this, our last close-up of Holly and our second last post in this series, I thought it apropos to look through the…

Harry Lime — the dead man who became undead, then alive again; the phantom who permeated the streets of Vienna; the name that crossed the lips of every main character in The Third Man; the unseen face (for the first hour, anyway) whose devious charisma haunted the mind and memory of his friends, lovers, and […] Harry Lime — the dead man who became undead, then alive again; the phantom who permeated the streets…

After a long subterranean sewer chase , and many escape attempts by Harry, foiled by the team of nameless police officers who haunt every exit and underground nook and cranny, Harry’s fingers are finally tasting the cool, clean air of freedom. In the tunnels below, Sergeant Paine lies dead or dying, fatally shot by Harry’s […] After a long subterranean sewer chase , and many escape attempts by Harry, foiled…

One of The Third Man‘s most iconic images, Still Dots 98 petrifies Harry Lime on the brink of life and death: after killing Calloway’s partner-in-arms and loyal companion, Sergeant Paine, Harry is himself plugged by Calloway and scrambles up this iron walkway, only yards away from the chilly open air of Vienna and, perhaps, yet another narrow escape from certain death. (Harry’s affinity with…

Here he is, finally standing before us as an honest-to-God human being. Harry Lime is no longer a glossy, larger-than-life übermensch staring down upon his domains, but now a human body, wet and cold in Vienna’s sewers, terrified and running for his life. Harry’s rehumanization is, of course, a combination of carefully crafted stylistic and […] Here he is, finally standing before us as an honest-to-God…

The swath of darkness and shadow we see above is courtesy of two Austrian policemen, whose unsubtitled German commands echo along the sewer tunnels to an increasingly frenzied Harry Lime. Montage editing conveyed an ensemble of nameless military policemen in Still Dots 95 — nameless but, as Jeremy noted on Tuesday, not faceless, as their momentary close-ups bestow upon these unknown men an air…

Deep in the subterranean world beneath Vienna, be it the city’s unconscious mind or the ancient Greek border between life and death, we are completely submerged in this nearly wordless world with a partially new cast of characters. Before us today stands one of them, one of nearly a dozen shots of nameless, wordless characters […] Deep in the subterranean world beneath Vienna, be it the city’s…

The audience, along with the British military police, has followed Harry Lime into his dank natural habitat: the sewers that underlie Vienna, a twisty and cavernous network that enables Harry’s covert maneuvering through (and beneath) the city. Jeremy noted on Tuesday the recurrence of sewers as a pop-culture motif from The Time Machine to Teenage […] The audience, along with the British military…