Deservedly under the 'Vintage Classics' label, two of Green's 'written for filming' novellas. The Third Man, even without Orson Welles' incredible 'cuckoo clock' speech, paints a great picture of a few months of life in post-(Second World)-war Europe and its effect on the common man as well as the weakening of the ties between the Russians and the other Allied Forces. The compelling tale of contradictory witness statements of a death caused by a car accident(?), where one statement talks of a third man at the scene, which does not balance with other witnesses. The Fallen Idol is another great story looking at what causes a seven year-old to lose total faith with a man he idolised within his household. 8 out of 12, Four Stars.

2022 read; 2011 read

Second rate Graham Greene, to be sure, but still quite entertaining. The quality of prose is a bit lacking in The Third Man, and it reads like the rushed source material that it is. Still, it works, despite a simplistic twist which would become commonplace a few years later.

The Fallen Idol is a bit better, especially in terms of language. There are some odd choices--flashing forward to the young protagonist 60 years later on his deathbed?-- that leave a strange aftertaste, but the story as a whole is quite strong.

I'd give this a 3.5 if I could... I suspect Mr. Greene wouldn't want it any higher, judging by his level criticism of both pieces. Recommended, but not for your first taste of Greene.

After reading The Third Man, or more specifically, the preface thereof, I was amazed to find out that Graham Greene had written the book just so he could have material from which to make a screenplay, and that he considered the original movie clearly better than the book. I found this a bit surprising at first as this was a solid book - very much a spy/detective novel with some twists and curveballs thrown in, though without the usual degree of moral ambiguity that you find in his other works like The Quiet American. After catching the 1949 movie, with Orson Welles, I got it. The movie was hands-down phenomenal - incredible noir cinematography, and a substantially different concluding scene from the novel.

The Fallen Idol is a much shorter story - 40-50 pages maybe - and packs a powerful punch. It was also made into a movie that Carol Reed directed, although I wasn't quite inspired enough by the story to put that one on my Netflix list.

Three stars for the "The Third Man", which makes the bulk of this rather short book.
Five stars for the relatively tiny "The Fallen Idol", which in my opinion turned out much better than its famous book-neighbor.

As I was reading up on Vienna in preparation for a trip, I found it has a whole museum devoted to the movie version of "The Third Man" as well as a bunch of guided tours through locations featured in this 1949th movie starring Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles. I love old movies and have seen hundreds, but not "The Third Man". Nevertheless, this cinematic masterpiece proclaimed by the British Film Institute to be the greatest British film of all time, is to blame for rising my expectations about Graham Greene's book.

The story is a bit disjointed, but purposefully so. The writing, when you look at it sentence by sentence, is fine. In my opinion, the major flaw of the book lies in how narration is organized.

The character who is actually telling the story, in retrospective, is the British policeman stationed in the post-war Vienna. So far, so good. The problem is, he tells most of it from the point of view of another character -- the writer of westerns Holly Martins. There are all these "As Martins later told me...", "As Martins later understood", "At that moment Martins felt" sprinkled along the way. That in itself could have worked perfectly well, but more often than not "As Martins told me" is followed by a precise description of minute trepidations of Martins' soul. Who on earth tells a policeman things along the lines of "as [a masterful description of intimate emotions], he understood that she was the woman to love". Nobody does, even if he is a troubled middle-aged writer. After the umpteenth "As Martin explained to me", I felt I've had enough. Of course, I did finish "The Third Man", but I wasn't overly impressed with it, even though I liked the plot and the setting.

So, by the time I'd reached "The Fallen Idol", I was completely free of high expectations. I didn't expect much of it, but I was pleasantly surprised. Here the form matched the content perfectly -- the point of view enhanced the story instead of clashing with it. A masterfully written short story, haunting and moving.