I’ve never seen the film of The Third Man or read any other Graham Greene, but I thought this short novel originally written as a film treatment (and here paired with The Fallen Idol) might be a reasonable place to start.

A product of the ruins of post-war Europe, first published in the 1950s, The Third Man has some of the feel of a golden age whodunnit, but with a lack of naivety and a darkness which come from the unique trauma of its time. The unfussy style makes it feel less of a period piece than one might expect.

While the setting of occupied Vienna creates special opportunities for the plot, the villainy at the centre of the story is the evil of self-interest without conscience - a timeless form of wickedness.

The Fallen Idol is an unsettling short story in 5 chapters about loss of innocence. The genre and style of writing feel quite different to those of The Third Man, but they share a curious incidental image which seems to have preoccupied Greene - earth in a graveyard so frozen that an electric drill must be used to break it.

The introduction and the prefaces to the two stories are interesting, but I’m glad I read them last to avoid spoilers.

"The Basement Room" (or "The Fallen Idol") is a masterpiece, in my humble opinion.
Poignant, moving and memorable short story.
And don't miss the movie, "The Fallen Idol" (1948), directed by the brilliant Carol Reed, with terrific performances by Ralph Richardson (as "Baines"), the beautiful Michèle Morgan, Sonia Dresdel and especially that wonderful young boy, Bobby Henrey (as "Phillipe").

There seems to be a whole business about "The Third Man" which is still going on in Vienna long after the release of Carol Reed's movie based on a script by Graham Greene. A very peculiar sort of script: this novella.

If you walk around the majestic Viennese Ring or through the polished, Charlotte Russe-like Innere Stadt of today, you will come across a "Third Man Museum", could join a "Third Man Tour - in the footsteps of Harry Lime", get the chance of watching the actual movie at the Burg Kino and will certainly meet a busker guitarist, playing the Harry Lime Theme at some corner. Not to mention the merchandising of t-shirts, teacups, dishes, key-rings with the face of Orson Welles or his silhouette at the end of a dark tunnel printed on them popping up from many souvenirs shops.

I've been there myself quite recently and somehow managed to resist to The Third Man's call. The greatest temptation I renounced to was the purchase of dusty old copy of "The Dritte Man", the German translation of what Graham Greene wrote. I don't read German and I guess I guess I will never do it. But, look, a dusty old, apparently neglected book to nurse and cradle in my hands is always a stroke of love.

Anyway, a few months later this last Viennese trip and back to the UK, I bought a copy of "The Third Man / The Fallen Idol" in one of those ubiquitous charity shop of Oxford and surroundings. May Calliope, Clio and Erato bless them! And here we are with this Third Man (I'm sorry for you fans of "The Fallen Idol", but there is no room in this review for it).

Graham Greene wrote a brilliant spy story with a perceivable coldness and discomfort feeling in it. Vienna looks stunning here in a way that is completely forgotten nowadays. It's a grim, hunger-striken Vienna still divided into four powers: Britain, France, the US and the Soviet Union. It's a Vienna where it's easier (and cheaper) spending half an hour with a tart than with a slice of Sachertorte, a dark town where everything felt apart, rubble fills the streets and the blackened tumbledown façades of the Augsburg-age palaces hang on the bystanders and the racketeers.
To put into Greene's words:

"The Danube was a grey flat muddy river a long way across the Second Bezirk, the Russian zone where the Prater lay smashed and desolate and full of weeds, only the Great Wheel revolving slowly over the foundations of merry-go-round like abandoned millstones, the rusting iron of smashed tanks which nobody had cleared away, the frost-nipped weeds where the snow was thin".

Well, what a contrast with contemporary wealthy and greeny Vienna, I say!
This is a Vienna caught at the end of World War Two and looking like London during the Blitz (a beloved novel set for Greene) or Berlin during the same period: a town on its knees where the local currency has no value and only foreigners can get goods and commodities thanks to their status.

The mysterious disappearance of Harry Lime - a British spy - and his chasing through Vienna by a childhood friend, Rollo Martins (Holly in the movie) makes a good plot with a pleasantly noir touch, but what I liked and sympathised with here is actually the city of Vienna rather than the characters.
Personally, I do think that Greene was far more talented a novelist than a screenplay writer (all the things he changed from the original novel for the first movie adaptation of "Brighton Rock" are a black spot in his literary career) and although "The Third Man" is technically a novella, there is something missing here. However, this book stands out as an important and clever one among its author huge literary production.
I would just say that there are better examples of Greene's mastery around.

It is no surprise that The Third Man as a novel remains inchoate. It is a signpost, a germinating seed carelessly pitched in frustrated haste. Where does it lead, what will grow? The film’s images travel in any reader’s bloodstream. Cotten, Howard and Welles occupy the dialogue. Greene’s descriptions are wan and undeveloped. What then can possibly pierce a contemporary reader? The crux of The Third Man is the death of loyalty. Reason and Ideology may trade blows in a makeshift ring, governed in an incomprehensible language, what matters is friendship, right? Even loyalties forged over a lifetime become suspect in the murky reality of postwar Vienna.

both stories are excellent and I loved them both. Graham Greene is a master storyteller, and is a genius at characterization - and from what I can see, much more about people than plot. It is just a crying shame that he's not as widely read as he should be.

I'll be linking this post directly to my reading journal, since I wrote about this book and The Ministry of Fear together. So read on:

http://www.crimesegments.com/2017/03/...

The Third Man
This novella had a great atmosphere, with settings and scenes which are nicely depicted. I don't know why, maybe it was the black and white cover, but I couldn't help but seeing this as a black and white movie in my head. It just screamed 'noir' setting. In the preface Greene tells us that the novella is written for a movieplay, and I actually want to see the screenplay now.

All in all, a quick read, but definitely one you shouldn't miss.


The Fallen Idol
I enjoyed this one less than the Third Man, because the scenes were not as clearly depicted with the same style and flow. Greene tells us in the preface that that's because this wasn't meant to be a screenplay, and that's why he likes this novella so much, but in my opinion it subtracted the quality of the novella. You can tell that this novella focuses a lot more on the mental terrors of Philip, the protagonist, and I can see a lot of people really enjoying this. I did however really like the buildup in the tension just before the most important event of the novella happens.

Μια μικρή ιστορία ενηλικίωσης, με τον νεαρό αγόρι να μαθαίνει πολύ γρήγορα και σκληρά, τον κόσμο των μεγάλων, καθώς στα μάτια του αποκαθηλώνεται ο μαγευτικός μπάτλερ του σπιτιού - ένας άντρας της περιπέτειας, με γοητευτικές αρχές, αλλά μάλλον απρόσεκτος, όπως όλοι γινόμαστε όταν μας κουράζει η ζωή.

Ο Γκράχαμ Γκριν εδώ γράφει πυκνά, με πολλά νοημάτα να κρύβονται στον κόσμο που βλέπει ο μικρός. Οι παρατηρήσεις του καθώς αποτελεί τον ενδιάμεσο μεταξύ του αγοριού και του αναγνώστη είναι οξυδερκείς, κοφτερές. Τσούζει η αλήθεια, αλλά τελικά αυτή είναι η ζωή μας: άλλοτε σκληρή, άλλοτε χαρωπή, μάταιη και πεπερασμένη.

Greene wrote The Third Man to flesh out his ideas before embarking on the screenplay. As he says in his preface, it "was never meant to be read, but only to be seen." Even so, it's a hell of a thriller, and even though it's been years since I've seen the film, I could follow the story better in the novella. The writing is superb. Expect to picture Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles the entire time, there's no way around it.

A strong detective novella and short story by the master. You can see the influence Greene would be on the likes of Philip Kerr, Alan Furst and Olen Steinhauer.

The Third Man is quite a different beast to the film, but I liked it just as much. The Fallen Idol I didn't know; it's a sad and uncomfortable story about a small boy who will be affected for the rest of his life by events he doesn't properly understand.

While I am slightly familiar with the writings of Graham Greene, I decided to make myself much more familiar with his writings by reading about twenty of his works over the course of the next month or so, and this happens to be the one I picked up first.  One notable aspect of Greene's writing was that it was very popular in his age of Hollywood, as numerous stories of his as well as novels have been turned into films.  Obviously, those who like his somewhat cynical style (something that has been present in nearly all of the works of his I have read) are going to appreciate the comparison between his writing and the way that writing has been visualized, and in this book there are two stories of considerable significance within his body of work.  To be sure, he wrote a lot more stories than that, but these two stories, one of which is far longer than the other, have a great deal to say about Greene's thoughtful reflection on deception and human dignity and the problem of violence, all of which were his stock and trade as a writer.

The first of these two stories is the novella Greene wrote as the initial treatment for the film The Third Man.  This story is set in postwar Vienna when it was under the joint rule of the four victorious powers of World War II, the Americans, English, French, and Russians.  This story takes advantage of the complexity of that period and shows the dangerous results of a man getting caught up in a penicillin racket and manages to keep a great deal of suspense about a series of deaths that results from the various plotting and scheming of the characters involved in the story.  The author is quick to praise the director and producer of the film with making his story come alive in stellar fashion, although the story is definitely well worth appreciating for its own considerable merits.  The second, and shorter, story here, "The Fallen Idol," is a very clever one that is told from the point of view of a boy whose world is filled with all kinds of lies and disguises, and whose innocent attempts at piercing the veil of deception lead to horrific consequences as his true state is revealed.  It is impossible not to have at least some sympathy for the character's plight, and Greeene ably stacks the deck to create a compelling story with a dramatic outcome.

Both of these two stories, therefore, are a good entrance into Greene's literature as a whole, which is a substantial and accomplished body of work.  While Greene was certainly a person who wrote with a rather cynical touch, there was always something deeper in his works, a poignancy that was capable of creating deep insights for the reader.  Both of these stories have that effect, as the Third Man shows someone trying to investigate the supposed death of a "friend" of his who is involved in some shady business of adulterating penicillin for profit despite the damage it does to others that involves a series of murders in Vienna, and the Fallen Idol shows a kidnapped boy who belatedly realizes his precarious position and the fact that the kidnapper who he respects, perhaps even idolizes, is someone capable of great evil, including adultery and murder, as the police become involved in his troubled existence.  Overall, the two stories are excellent and they do a good job at showing Greene's work for its insight as well as its craft.

This edition comprises two Graham Greene novels which were made in to films, The Third Man and Fallen Idol, neither of which I have seen. As a result I came to these novels completely fresh. The Third Man was, to me, a fairly slow paced and, initially at least, uninvolving tale of espionage and double crossing in post war Austria. I slogged through it and by the end felt that I had read a very well written book, but two to three days later I have forgotten most of the details. The second novella although it is barely more than a short story is, in contrast, absolutely brilliant. The story of a young boy who hero worships a servant in his house grips from the beginning and draws the reader in page by page. The writing is spare but not a word is wasted and here Greene has written a classic of the genre. Any aspiring writers could easily use this as a model of story writing perfection. I would definitely go back to The Fallen Idol but wouldn't bother with The Third Man. I have given the book 4 stars overall with The Third Man rating barely 3 and The Fallen Idol a resounding 5.