The Third Man vs Touch of Evil

The Third Man

Reed and cinematographer Robert Krasker tilt the camera sideways throughout the film, a shot known as a Dutch angle. It makes postwar Vienna feel morally unstable. This is a city where the normal rules don't apply, where a charming man can sell watered-down penicillin to dying children and stay charming.

Touch of Evil

A Dutch angle is a shot where the camera is tilted so the horizon looks slanted. Welles uses extreme ones all through Touch of Evil, and the tilted look tells you how morally lost everyone is. In this border town, you can't tell law from crime. People drift between 2 national identities, and the detective is also the criminal. The tilted frames never let you feel like you're on stable ground.

The Third Man

Krasker's photography gives Vienna its defining look: pools of lamplight on wet cobblestones and figures stepping out of doorway shadows. The black-and-white is pushed to such extremes that the city itself seems to be making a moral point. Harry Lime's reveal (the cat, the doorway shadow, the lamplight) is the most famous use of chiaroscuro, the strong contrast of light and dark, in film noir.

Touch of Evil

Chiaroscuro means lighting with very bright areas next to very dark ones. Russell Metty shot the film under Welles's direction, and no Hollywood film of the sound era pushes that contrast further. Hank Quinlan is almost always in shadow. His bulk comes out of the darkness and only half his face is lit. The lighting lets you see his corruption. He is a corrupt man, so he stays in shadow even indoors.

The Third Man

Holly Martins is the worst possible investigator for this story. He loved Harry Lime and can't see him clearly. Whenever someone tells him about Harry's crimes, he dismisses it or explains it away. The film takes Holly apart step by step, and each scene strips off another layer of the story he told himself about his friend.

Touch of Evil

Quinlan is introduced as an experienced lawman. Then you find out he plants evidence, commits murder and has been corrupting justice for decades. Early on, you see things his way (the confident detective reading crime scenes). The film builds that trust on purpose so it can take it apart. Looking back, you are no longer sure about anything Quinlan told you.