- The Third Man and The Fallen Idol

LibraryThing member soylentgreen23

Two of Graham Greene's shorter stories, both of which were given the film treatment by the legendary Carol Reed. I enjoyed 'The Third Man' a lot, but 'The Fallen Idol', originally a short story written in the 30s and called 'The Basement Room', seemed too slight, and I think it is included here for

the sensible reason that it represents another of Greene's stories that was made into a film.

As for 'The Third Man', the film is better, and Greene accepts this too - in fact, the story was only written as a novel so that it would be easier to make a film out of it, rather than moving straight from the idea to the script. Reading it, one realises just how perfect Orson Welles was for the role of Harry Lime.

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LibraryThing member Sean191

While not as enjoyable as my first adventure with the works of Greene (Our Man in Havana), both stories were still worth the read. I felt The Third Man was better than The Fallen Idol which makes me wonder a bit. Graham's stories are fairly short and so far, my liking for them have run in order of

length with the longest being the best and the shortest being my least favorite. His characters are always interesting and fun, but he needs more pages devoted to developing them.

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LibraryThing member john257hopper

A gripping story which was actually written purely so that the author could then write the film screenplay from it, so this is in effect a first draft of the film script. The additional tale The Fallen Idol is tedious, though I can understand the author's intention in trying to present an affair

and a killing from a youg child's point of view.

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LibraryThing member VictorTrevor

This is one of those occasions where the film is better than the original book, perhaps because, as Greene says in the preface "The Third Man was never written to be read but only to be seen." The story follows the rather disorganised attempts of Rollo Martins to investiagte the death of his friend

Harry Lime against the background of black marketeers in post-war Vienna.

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LibraryThing member nilsonbazana

Better than the film? We shall see...

The popular belief states that most movies based on books ("films", for you people across the pond) do not usually quite reflect all of their literary cousin's greatness on the big screen.

I found myself asking that very question after finishing the written

"version" of one movie which always, in one way or another, ends up making onto most people's 100-best list: Carol Reed's "The Third Man".

Just to warn the less cinematographically knowledgeable, or whoever who, just like me, didn't actually pay much attention to the initial credits, this movie has unusually taken the opposite path: the script was penned by Graham Greene and - I'm not aware if intentionally or not, either himself or his agent, saw the potential for a post-movie book. So here we have it!

The result is that we are presented with the accounts of the Austrian adventures of one "Rollo" Martins, which, you've guessed it, was later changed (mostly due to Joseph Cotten's polite protests) to a similarly and intentionally absurd "Hollie" Martins.

In regards to the transcription itself, Greene warns us in the preface, that changes are to be expected, naturally, on any movie's literary translation and, going the extra mile, he tries to guess or deduct why they were applied, in the first place. Sometimes it was Reed, as one would expect; sometimes, in all his writing greatness, Orson Welles, who is to take the full credit for adding up the memorable "Cuckoo Clock Speech" to the celluloid version, for instance.

As an encouragement for you to read this excellent work, I won't spoil the ending by saying if it was either happier or more poignant than the one in the film. All I can say is that, it is also, as many parts in the book, slightly different. But still a great book nonetheless!

As for the other half of this book, The Fallen Idol, I think it falls into the "interesting short story" category: Though a bit long for such, the development and characters' depth falls way too short from The Third Man's. I'd rate it 2 ou of 5.

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LibraryThing member TheAmpersand

In his introduction to this combined volume, Graham Greene admits that written version of the "The Third Man" is probably an afterthought to its film version. He's right -- it's a decidedly minor work on the page -- but both the author's modesty and his honesty is refreshing. While the plot of this

novella will likely be familiar to many readers, there are still a few things to enjoy. Greene's narrator, an old embassy hand, takes considerable pleasure in describing the byzantine bureaucratic machinations that defined life in postwar Vienna. There is also the question of evil that lies at the center of the book, touched on, famously, during the conversation that Harry Lime and his former friend have while sitting atop a dilapidated feris wheel. Greene doesn't really provide an answer to Lime's ruthless view of human nature here, but its a very memorable scene, and, since Vienna's residents were likely just coming to terms with totalitarianism´s atrocities in the years that immediately followed World War II , the ambiguities it raises seem particularly appropriate to the book's setting.

"The Fallen Idol" isn't much more than a short story, but seems the stronger work here. Its a gothic, psychologically haunted picture of a badly out-of-balance domestic arrangement. Some readers will probably charge that it courts misogyny and is, in places, a bit too forthright about its themes, and those criticisms are, I think, valid. But "The Fallen Idol" is still effective as a depiction of childhood trauma and a particular sort emotional dependence and vulnerability that's exclusive to the earlier stages of our lives. In fact, I was surprised that a writer who is best known for his "cinematic" style and emphasis on plot handled could handle psychological complexities of childhood so well. Also, the marked contrast between central protagonist's keen observations about of the difficult situation in which he finds himself and his inability to take much agency in his own role in the drama that goes on around him is painful to witness. These two stories, brief though they are, don't suggest that Mr. Greene was much of an optimist when it came to human nature.

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LibraryThing member leslie.98

The Third Man: 3½ stars. For once, I think that the movie is better - and reading the preface, so did Greene himself! I hadn't known that he wrote this specifically for Carol Reed to film after their successful collaboration with The Fallen Idol… This is a good suspense story but it lacks the

tension which the film had and doesn't come up to the standard of This Gun For Hire or Brighton Rock.

I didn't read The Fallen Idol so my rating doesn't apply to that.

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LibraryThing member lucybrown

Contained in this volume are two stories which while very different in subject, character and setting, both bear the Greene stain, that quest to understand why man sins; why, ultimately, he is weak. Greene once said something to the effect that he was always surprised to find himself loved knowing

he was the sort of person only his mother and God is likely to love. As a Jansenist, even that fierce love of God was not a certainty as only a few are elected. Rollo Martins, the hapless (or is that more effect than real) is reminded of this in the too pristine office of the too pristine Dr. Winkler. Winkler, a collector of relics and crucifixes ( is there a Greene story without a significant crucifix?) has among his collection a Jansenist cross with the Saviour's arms reaching upward rather than widely, all embracing. Later Martin is reminded that to much of humanity those one do not know are mere moving dots which can be stopped without remorse. Any such remorse is sentimentality. Where does this leave the individual, God is not all embracing and one's fellows are indifferent to one's fate. Often this is the thread that Greene's novel run along. Where is the point in virtue or as is lampooned in an arrest scene the American chivalry. Weak though they may be Greene's heroes often choose to look at humans as worth caring about. So is the case with the hero of The Third Man, but not The Fallen Idol. Greene's famously jaundiced eye takes it all in, then drops the whole corrupt wallow in your lap without answers. But then Chekov says it is the artist's job to ask questions, not answer them.

That is quite a long set up for the review of an novella which Greene would have put in the category of an "entertainment." Even among his entertainments, he considered it a weak effort. It was never meant to be a book at all. Carol Kane asked for a script, Greene never could script except from a story, thus he wrote the novella as a launch pad for the movie script. He acknowledges it as weak. Weak by his standards,at least. Still, it is an excellent suspense story set in the moody, fractured postwar Vienna where commodities such as tires, medicines and joy are scarce. On the other hand corruption is rampant. Called there to work with his schoolfriend, Harry Lime, Rollo Martins arrives in the surreal mess of the once fairy take city to find his friend dead and suspected by the English police force of being involved in a racket, "the dirtiest racket" in a city teeming with such. Determined to defend his schoolmate's honor, Martins begins an investigation of his own. There is a side complication in that Martins, after being mistaken as a major literary novelist who shares the same last name as the pen name Martins uses for his Western novelettes, goes along with the mistake when he finds there is free food, lodging at the Hotel Sacher and cash to be gained. There is added fun in that the novelist he is mistaken for is obviously a fictionalized E. M. Forster. I can just imagine the smug look on Greene's face as he wrote that bit.

Tautly, deftly crafted, The Third Man is great moody fun. "The Fallen Idol" is not. Not fun, not fun that is. The story is told in retrospect by an elderly man who acknowledges his own nihilistic dilettantism . He describes an event in which as a naive child he unwittingly participates in the secrets of his hero, the family butler. Forever marked by the event he cowers into the life of ineffectual dabbler. Of the two stories, this is the story Greene thought the better. Artistically speaking it is. The corruption of a child by unthinking adults is one of the more haunting motifs in literature. Greene serves it up beautifully here.

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LibraryThing member lucybrown

Contained in this volume are two stories which while very different in subject, character and setting, both bear the Greene stain, that quest to understand why man sins; why, ultimately, he is weak. Greene once said something to the effect that he was always surprised to find himself loved knowing

he was the sort of person only his mother and God is likely to love. As a Jansenist, even that fierce love of God was not a certainty as only a few are elected. Rollo Martins, the hapless (or is that more effect than real) is reminded of this in the too pristine office of the too pristine Dr. Winkler. Winkler, a collector of relics and crucifixes ( is there a Greene story without a significant crucifix?) has among his collection a Jansenist cross with the Saviour's arms reaching upward rather than widely, all embracing. Later Martin is reminded that to much of humanity those one do not know are mere moving dots which can be stopped without remorse. Any such remorse is sentimentality. Where does this leave the individual, God is not all embracing and one's fellows are indifferent to one's fate. Often this is the thread that Greene's novel run along. Where is the point in virtue or as is lampooned in an arrest scene the American chivalry. Weak though they may be Greene's heroes often choose to look at humans as worth caring about. So is the case with the hero of The Third Man, but not The Fallen Idol. Greene's famously jaundiced eye takes it all in, then drops the whole corrupt wallow in your lap without answers. But then Chekov says it is the artist's job to ask questions, not answer them.

That is quite a long set up for the review of an novella which Greene would have put in the category of an "entertainment." Even among his entertainments, he considered it a weak effort. It was never meant to be a book at all. Carol Kane asked for a script, Greene never could script except from a story, thus he wrote the novella as a launch pad for the movie script. He acknowledges it as weak. Weak by his standards,at least. Still, it is an excellent suspense story set in the moody, fractured postwar Vienna where commodities such as tires, medicines and joy are scarce. On the other hand corruption is rampant. Called there to work with his schoolfriend, Harry Lime, Rollo Martins arrives in the surreal mess of the once fairy take city to find his friend dead and suspected by the English police force of being involved in a racket, "the dirtiest racket" in a city teeming with such. Determined to defend his schoolmate's honor, Martins begins an investigation of his own. There is a side complication in that Martins, after being mistaken as a major literary novelist who shares the same last name as the pen name Martins uses for his Western novelettes, goes along with the mistake when he finds there is free food, lodging at the Hotel Sacher and cash to be gained. There is added fun in that the novelist he is mistaken for is obviously a fictionalized E. M. Forster. I can just imagine the smug look on Greene's face as he wrote that bit.

Tautly, deftly crafted, The Third Man is great moody fun. "The Fallen Idol" is not. Not fun, not fun that is. The story is told in retrospect by an elderly man who acknowledges his own nihilistic dilettantism . He describes an event in which as a naive child he unwittingly participates in the secrets of his hero, the family butler. Forever marked by the event he cowers into the life of ineffectual dabbler. Of the two stories, this is the story Greene thought the better. Artistically speaking it is. The corruption of a child by unthinking adults is one of the more haunting motifs in literature. Greene serves it up beautifully here.

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LibraryThing member lucybrown

Contained in this volume are two stories which while very different in subject, character and setting, both bear the Greene stain, that quest to understand why man sins; why, ultimately, he is weak. Greene once said something to the effect that he was always surprised to find himself loved knowing

he was the sort of person only his mother and God is likely to love. As a Jansenist, even that fierce love of God was not a certainty as only a few are elected. Rollo Martins, the hapless (or is that more effect than real) is reminded of this in the too pristine office of the too pristine Dr. Winkler. Winkler, a collector of relics and crucifixes ( is there a Greene story without a significant crucifix?) has among his collection a Jansenist cross with the Saviour's arms reaching upward rather than widely, all embracing. Later Martin is reminded that to much of humanity those one do not know are mere moving dots which can be stopped without remorse. Any such remorse is sentimentality. Where does this leave the individual, God is not all embracing and one's fellows are indifferent to one's fate. Often this is the thread that Greene's novel run along. Where is the point in virtue or as is lampooned in an arrest scene the American chivalry. Weak though they may be Greene's heroes often choose to look at humans as worth caring about. So is the case with the hero of The Third Man, but not The Fallen Idol. Greene's famously jaundiced eye takes it all in, then drops the whole corrupt wallow in your lap without answers. But then Chekov says it is the artist's job to ask questions, not answer them.

That is quite a long set up for the review of an novella which Greene would have put in the category of an "entertainment." Even among his entertainments, he considered it a weak effort. It was never meant to be a book at all. Carol Kane asked for a script, Greene never could script except from a story, thus he wrote the novella as a launch pad for the movie script. He acknowledges it as weak. Weak by his standards,at least. Still, it is an excellent suspense story set in the moody, fractured postwar Vienna where commodities such as tires, medicines and joy are scarce. On the other hand corruption is rampant. Called there to work with his schoolfriend, Harry Lime, Rollo Martins arrives in the surreal mess of the once fairy take city to find his friend dead and suspected by the English police force of being involved in a racket, "the dirtiest racket" in a city teeming with such. Determined to defend his schoolmate's honor, Martins begins an investigation of his own. There is a side complication in that Martins, after being mistaken as a major literary novelist who shares the same last name as the pen name Martins uses for his Western novelettes, goes along with the mistake when he finds there is free food, lodging at the Hotel Sacher and cash to be gained. There is added fun in that the novelist he is mistaken for is obviously a fictionalized E. M. Forster. I can just imagine the smug look on Greene's face as he wrote that bit.

Tautly, deftly crafted, The Third Man is great moody fun. "The Fallen Idol" is not. Not fun, not fun that is. The story is told in retrospect by an elderly man who acknowledges his own nihilistic dilettantism . He describes an event in which as a naive child he unwittingly participates in the secrets of his hero, the family butler. Forever marked by the event he cowers into the life of ineffectual dabbler. Of the two stories, this is the story Greene thought the better. Artistically speaking it is. The corruption of a child by unthinking adults is one of the more haunting motifs in literature. Greene serves it up beautifully here.

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LibraryThing member lamour

Within this small volume, we find two novellas by the English master novelist. The Fallen Idol is really a short story. Both were turned into films by Carol Reed. The Third Man was actually written from the film script while The Fallen Idol was originally a short story which Reed asked Greene to

turn into a film script.

The Third Man is set in occupied Vienna right after the end of WW I. The black market is thriving and Rollo Martins is invited to join his friend Harry Lime in the business. Martins arrives in Vienna to find himself attending Lime's funeral. As he investigates what happened to Lime, he finds Lime was wanted by the police for selling bad penicillin which had killed children. Who killed Lime and why? What does Lime's girlfriend know? A dark complicated mystery playing out in a city divided into sectors by the four victorious nations which leads to more agendas.

The Fallen Idol tells about seven year old Philip from a wealthy London family who looks forward to two weeks of freedom when his parents go on a two week holiday. The butler Baines treats him like an equal but Baines' wife is a shrew who doesn't like anyone to have fun. She nags her husband and threatens the boy. Soon the Philip learns too much of adult lies and deceptions and when his friend Baines needs him to keep silent about some of what he knows, he cannot which leads to big trouble for Baines. This a short tight murder mystery.

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LibraryThing member Eyejaybee

Carol Reed’s film of The Third Man, starring Orson Welles as Harry Lime and famous for its haunting theme music played on a zither, is widely (perhaps universally) acknowledged one of the great cinematic classics. This is the book of the film – unusually, the film came first, Graham Greene

expanding his screenplay to produce this novella.

Set in post-war Vienna, a city governed jointly by the victorious Allies from the Second World War. The life of the boulevardier is long gone, replaced by ultra-austerity and grim rationing. Each of the four powers controls a different section of the city and movement between the different zones, and particularly in and out of the Soviet area, is limited. Green captures the endemic melancholia marvellously: that was, after all, so often his trademark. Many of his novels are set against a context of pervasive misery and pessimism. Indeed, critics came to refer to the hinterland of gloom as ‘Greeneland’ and late 1940s Vienna fits the bill closely.

The novella is recounted by Calloway, a Scotland Yard police officer who had been sent to Vienna with the gazetted military rank of colonel. He is, however, investigating black market infractions. Rollo Martins, who struggles to make a living as the writer of hammy Westerns, is invited out to Vienna by his old school friend Harry Lime, who lures him with the offer of a job writing promotional material for a charity bringing comfort to some of the hordes of displaced persons who have been drawn to the city. Upon his arrival in Vienna, however, Martins learns that Lime had died a few days ago, and is about to be buried that very afternoon. Feeling a displaced person himself, martins speaks to some of Harry Lime’s circle of friends and acquaintances, each of whom offers a slightly different version of Harry’s death. Confused and upset, Martins’s discomfiture increases when he suddenly sees Lime, large as life, walking down the street.

The story unwinds dexterously and Martins is pulled further into the mystery as he tries to reconstruct Lime’s life in Vienna, and to explain his apparent death and subsequent reappearance. Issues of conscience and obscured morality were Greene’s speciality, fuelled by his own doubts and religious ambivalence, allowing him to capture Martin’s quandary perfectly.

I think that this is one of those rare instances where the film is better than the book, though the book is still exceptionally strong, and it certainly demonstrates Greene on top form.

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LibraryThing member charlie68

Really good.

LibraryThing member jonfaith

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.

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by Graham Greene

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