The Third Man (1949)

the rise of fascism in Europe has often been attributed to one ‘crisis of faith’, a ‘crisis of language’ even. The Third Man takes place in the midst of one of these crisis; its is a world that doesn’t recognize itself anymore, too frightened by its own shadows. it’s essentially a film about the Holocaust, perhaps one of the very first — though neither it nor the Nazis are ever directly mentioned —, and it asks the simple, yet lethal question of: how? how could something like that even happen? but the moment it looks into this abyss, the more it looks, the more what it finds seems to reflect back. and so, out of sight, the sewers of Vienna, with their alleyways and hideouts, almost parrallel the city’s itself.