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“Harry”

By Michael Moriarty
web posted May 16, 2022

“Harry,” in the legendary, 1946 film, The Third Man, acts as a British handle for an English-speaking Adolf Hitler.

Why this film should declare that the next “Hitlerian villainy” should come out of the English-speaking world is purely Graham Greene’s prophetic genius; and, certainly, a culminating glimpse of Orson Welles’ indisputable gifts as the creator of Harry Lime.

Orson Wells in The Third ManWelles apparently, at least from Wikipedia’s article on that film, was a most infuriating presence on the set. His greatest creation as an actor/director, Citizen Kane, had already been released in 1941, elevating him to the highest level of 20th Century film genius. 

Apparently, he looked down upon his fellow filmmakers, during The Third Man, with contempt. Then again, playing what he must have known would prove to be one of cinema’s most loathsome villains, he wallowed in what his indisputable success as a star and filmmaker had already brought him. The anger it inspired in his fellow workers seems to be everything he hoped for as an artist.

Harry Lime, Orson Welles assured us, would never be forgotten! 

However, in tribute to the film’s own genius, the absolute, super-brilliance involved in the creation of Graham Greene’s and Carol Reed’s The Third Man is indisputable.

And Carol Reed’s battle with Graham Greene over the film’s ending is a thrilling part of movie history.

Thank God for Reed’s bitter ending to his classic! After the mad pursuit of a Harry Lime’s piece of human excrement, yes, the film’s culminating chase in the sewers or, yes, the grand toilet of Vienna’s entire population?! There would be no way for the bitter truth of this masterpiece to ignore the infuriating melodrama of a female’s blind love and obsession with, yes, a perversely charming turd like Harry Lime.

Yes, Alida Valli’s Anna Schmidt, walks, with a most impressively blind contempt, right past our hero, Joseph Cotton’s Holly Martins.

This final scene, set in Vienna’s most legendary graveyard, holds no hope for the future.

Given Soviet Russia’s presently evil presence in the Ukraine?! The Third Man’s Soviet hiding place for Harry Lime is a prophetic glimpse of Vladimir Putin’s Soviet insanity.

The rolling thunder of The Third Man’s greatness as a film appears to be unstoppable.

Today, a white supremacist, racist and madman, a la the Fuhrer, just executed ten, black, fellow Americans.

“Harry”, however, with his poisonous penicillin, throws God knows how many young children into hospital emergency wards all over Vienna. This villain’s relatively brief nightmare in the sewers of his city – where he should be - has him executed by our hero, one of his former admirers.

How could the civilized, 1946, multi-national, Viennese people harbor such a monster?

They don’t.

The occupying and tyrannizing Russian troops hide and protect him, keep the rumors of his death alive!

Meanwhile, here, amidst 2022 A.D.’s present human race, the free world’s Second Cold War with the Soviets has broken out in Ukraine!

The Third Man is, therefore, beyond even prophetic; and its director even more accurate about the future than, perhaps, he might have known.

Now-ever-a-legend, this cinematic miracle, The Third Man, has re-entered my life.

I’m about to search for a television channel it is regularly on because I recently viewed it after the broadcast had already begun.

Being a fifty-year veteran of the entertainment business, I’m rarely hypnotized by any corner of show business, except, however, for the mysteries and profoundly haunting fame of The Third Man.

I feel a bit possessed by it now.

Soviet Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Red China’s tyrannical designs on Taiwan.

Radical Islam’s homicidal hatred of Israel and all Jews.

Something must be done about those, endless nightmares.

Something will be done about them.

That, however, will all depend upon the free world’s courage.

I doubt, at 81 years of age, if I’ll ever see such a miracle while I’m alive.

I can, however, daydream about it.

Communism and Radical Islam on other planets.

Star Wars, of course.

Mother Earth, on the other hand, as heaven itself. ESR

Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@shaw.ca. He can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/@MGMoriarty

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