"What is The Third Man is no great mystery: it's one of the greatest expressions of the noir attitude ever committed to film. If noir reflects the cultural anxieties of the day -- as modern noir such as Blue Velvet and Pulp Fiction mirror fears about, respectively, sex and drugs -- then The Third Man may be the truest depiction of the chaos and confusion of the period right after WWII, when national alliances were shifting and the horrors of the war, so recently uncovered, would begin to pale in comparison of those of the politically unstable world the war left in its wake."
Mary Ann Johanson: Review of The Third Man
"The Third Man reflects the optimism of Americans and the bone-weariness of Europe after the war. It's a story about grown-ups and children: adults like Calloway, who has seen at firsthand the results of Lime's crimes, and children like the trusting Holly, who believes in the simplified good and evil of his Western novels.
The Third Man is like the exhausted aftermath of Casablanca. Both have heroes who are American exiles, awash in a world of treachery and black market intrigue. Both heroes love a woman battered by the war. But Casablanca is bathed in the hope of victory, while The Third Man already reflects the Cold War years of paranoia, betrayal and the Bomb. The hero doesn't get the girl in either movie--but in ``Casablanca,'' Ilsa stays with the resistance leader to help in his fight, while in ``The Third Man'' Anna remains loyal to a rat. Yet Harry Lime saved Anna, a displaced person who faced certain death. Holly will never understand what Anna did to survive the war, and Anna has absolutely no desire to tell him."
Roger Ebert on The Third Man
