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It is right that most critics regard the film version of The Third Man directed by Carol Reed as more successful than its literary source. It deserves the accepted complementary opinion that the film preserves the basic themes of the novel more effectively. Graham Greene's own statement that the film is better than the story because it is in this case the finished state of the story would seem to support such an opinion. In my view the film does not preserve the themes of the novel; rather, it develops themes and concerns which the novel suggests. The movie objectifies the ambiguity in Martins and it suggests Harry Lime as his double or alter-ego. The film's omniscient narration opens with Martins's voice-over describing postwar Vienna. It then switches to central narration, following the events as they unfold from Martins's perspective, using the main principal of the action as a filter. The effect of this is to make Martins's experience contemporaneous and immediate in contrast to the retrospective first-person narration of the novel.
I believe, therefore, Graham Greene's The Third Man is a case of a novel whose narrator is less effective than others that could have been used. By making Calloway the narrator and having him tell the story, the novel dissipates much of the suspense implicit in the situation. Greene tries to get the thriller effect into the passage by making the narrator enigmatic and gives the impression of uncertainty about whether a given comment is to be interpreted as Calloway's or as Martins's. Even worse, comments are assigned to Martins in a way that seems completely arbitrary and unmotivated. It is not only suspense and clarity of theme that is undercut by the novel's decision to make Calloway narrator, but perhaps most of all the atmosphere and setting in which the events must be imagined. That is where Reed's true genius emerges, and the film will always be one that sets standard for its genre. The film version of The Third Man follows a simple structure familiar to the detective thriller genre: the search, through interviews with witnesses, for the murderer of one's friend. Thus the design of the plot itself suggest the crescendo of suspense not only as the answer is approached, but because the approach entails greater and greater risks to the protagonist-searcher, by choosing Martins as the narrator. This rising tension is deflated by the novel's decision to tell the story through Calloway.
The theme of The Third Man blossomed better in the cinema than the novel. Carol Reed maximized the power of the medium expecially with respect to the cinematic narrator.

키워드

저자

• 최만산 [ Choi, Man-San | 군산대학교 인문대학 영어영문학과 ]

참고문헌

발행기관

간행물

표지보기 관심저널 등록

• 간행물명

  영어영문학연구 [Studies on English Language & Literature]

• 간기

  계간

• pISSN

  1226-8682

• 수록기간

  1972~2020

• 십진분류

  KDC 840 DDC 820