So indeed it is through visual technique that we gain a meaning of the work, but this technique also serves to tell the story. A film which would appear to use visual technique successfully in serving the narrative, style and themes would be The Third Man. Directed by Carol Reed in 1949 from a novel by Graham Greene, it deals with an American writer, Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotten), who arrives in Vienna to meet a friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to discover him dead. Holly searches Vienna for clues to the death and is unable to find the third witness to the event. He eventually learns that the third man was Lime - who had another man killed in his place, and is alive and successful as a black marketeer. An appreciation of this story requires no understanding of the codes of cinema, indeed it was Welles’s most successful, and arguably most accessible film. However, the film is an excellent example of visuals both perfectly serving the narrative and atmosphere, whilst often alluding to something more.

The first image the audience sees is the vibrating strings of a zither in huge close up. This effective visual both introduces the viewer to Anton Karas’ brilliant zither music, and, by showing something in such unnerving close up, creates a sense of distortion which continues throughout the film. Like Saul Bass’s title work for Hitchcock, it is the simplicity of this device which makes it so successful in creating a sense of foreboding or mystery, emphasised, no doubt, by the western audience’s lack of familiarity with the zither. Indeed the audience is about to enter a world of which they know little and visual technique alone is not enough to prepare them for this. The voice over introduction to the film (inserted at the insistence of producer David O. Selznick) establishes key issues to the film which could not have been obtained by visual means alone.

The sense of mystery in Greene’s script is emphasised by Robert Krasker’s Oscar winning photography. A large proportion of shots are with a heavy tilt which creates a feeling of disorientation in the viewer. This feeling perhaps matches the disorientation of Holly Martins, who as a visitor to the city is as ignorant of Vienna’s black market as the viewer. We get a hint of Holly’s sense of displacement in one of the earliest shots of the film when he confidently walks under a ladder. Considering the bad luck which falls upon him moments later when he discovers his friend is dead, this is arguably a visual joke suggesting he should tread carefully. Indeed, it is Holly’s disregard for the systems at work in Vienna which lead him into so much trouble.

The film’s night sequences were shot night-for-night with hard light and high contrast. Rarely are we more aware of the conflict between light and dark - both visually and morally - than during the various chases amongst Vienna’s ruins. The use of shadows is a technique familiar to film noir creating disproportionate feelings of tension and confusion. A good example of this is the old balloon seller who approaches during the stake out for Lime: his giant shadow appears first and the viewer is led to believe, through the pacing of the editing and the reaction of Calloway and Paine, that this could be Lime. When the small figure of an elderly balloon seller appears, we are reminded again how appearances can deceive. Earlier, when a drunken Holly first sees Lime, he chases his shadow to a large square whereupon Lime disappears. As we saw Lime buried early in the film, the fact that Holly chases not Lime, but his shadow, is perhaps of symbolic value for he is effectively chasing a ghost. When Holly recounts his story to Major Callahan he admits how incredulous the story appears. However, because the audience also saw Lime, in ‘one of cinema’s most famous reveals’2 the viewer sides with a drunken man over common sense and a figure of authority. This is an example of the strength of realism: the viewer puts its faith in the visual language of the film for there are no reasons to suspect the camera would lie.

One method of conveying meaning visually is through the use of props, particularly when associated with characters. Lime is identified through his cat, which, in the scene mentioned above, nuzzles against his shiny black shoes. On the one hand it lets the wily viewer realise who this is, for we are told in the previous scene that the cat only likes Lime. In addition it says something about his character: the contradiction of a man who casually causes death and madness amongst children having an affectionate relationship with a small animal. Baron Kurtz, who appears to aspire more to ‘the old Vienna before the war, with it’s Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm’ is associated with a small dog which is carried with him, and during Holly’s visit to Dr Winkel’s flat, it briefly appears. This is a clever device, for without showing Kurtz’s presence at Winkel’s dinner party we are aware that he must be a guest. That Winkel does not mention this arouses the viewer’s suspicion that the witnesses to Lime’s death may in some way be working together. Here is an example where meaning can be derived from what is seen as much as what is not seen, for the lingering shot of a silver knife hovering over a roasted chicken is the only image we get of Winkel’s dinner party. The viewer is left to decide whom are the guests sitting around Winkel’s table.

Whilst this is not a film about childhood, there are visual reminders of it, perhaps because Harry and Holly’s relationship started as children. Whilst Holly questions the porter about Lime’s death, a rubber ball bounces into the room followed by Hansel, his son. Later after his father has been killed, Hansel, still clutching the ball, accusing Holly for the murder. Paul Driver describes the boy as ‘a horrific dwarf, yet an oddly lifelike portrayal of a shrieking child’3 and he acts as a reminder to Holly of the dangerous world he is mixing up in. Later in the film the viewer is spared from seeing the resultant horrors of Lime’s penicillin racket; instead the camera centres on an unclaimed teddy bear. The choice of a fairground as meeting point for Holly and Lime also reminds us of the children of Vienna as we see an empty carousel. Here visual metaphor would seem to allude to betrayed or lost innocence: that of Lime’s as a child, of Holly as he discovers his friend’s darker side, and the children who died from Lime’s black market penicillin.

‘Through the contents of the image and the resources of montage, the cinema has at its disposal a whole arsenal of means whereby to impose its interpretation of an event on the spectator.’1 Whether a viewer is consciously aware of the creative and technical decisions involved in a particular film or not, it is without doubt that these choices strongly affect that viewer’s interpretation of the work. On the simplest level, visual technique is used to convey the narrative of the film. This is achieved through the structure of the shot, mise en scène; and the order and pacing of successive shots, montage. On a secondary level, visual technique can be used to ‘set the scene’ and to create an atmosphere which enhances the viewer’s involvement with the film. Finally, on a tertiary level, the film image holds connotative meanings: that is the structure of scene and montage can serve greater themes or ideas than simply telling the story.

So indeed it is through visual technique that we gain a meaning of the work, but this technique also serves to tell the story. A film which would appear to use visual technique successfully in serving the narrative, style and themes would be The Third Man. Directed by Carol Reed in 1949 from a novel by Graham Greene, it deals with an American writer, Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotten), who arrives in Vienna to meet a friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to discover him dead. Holly searches Vienna for clues to the death and is unable to find the third witness to the event. He eventually learns that the third man was Lime - who had another man killed in his place, and is alive and successful as a black marketeer. An appreciation of this story requires no understanding of the codes of cinema, indeed it was Welles’s most successful, and arguably most accessible film. However, the film is an excellent example of visuals both perfectly serving the narrative and atmosphere, whilst often alluding to something more.

The first image the audience sees is the vibrating strings of a zither in huge close up. This effective visual both introduces the viewer to Anton Karas’ brilliant zither music, and, by showing something in such unnerving close up, creates a sense of distortion which continues throughout the film. Like Saul Bass’s title work for Hitchcock, it is the simplicity of this device which makes it so successful in creating a sense of foreboding or mystery, emphasised, no doubt, by the western audience’s lack of familiarity with the zither. Indeed the audience is about to enter a world of which they know little and visual technique alone is not enough to prepare them for this. The voice over introduction to the film (inserted at the insistence of producer David O. Selznick) establishes key issues to the film which could not have been obtained by visual means alone.

The sense of mystery in Greene’s script is emphasised by Robert Krasker’s Oscar winning photography. A large proportion of shots are with a heavy tilt which creates a feeling of disorientation in the viewer. This feeling perhaps matches the disorientation of Holly Martins, who as a visitor to the city is as ignorant of Vienna’s black market as the viewer. We get a hint of Holly’s sense of displacement in one of the earliest shots of the film when he confidently walks under a ladder. Considering the bad luck which falls upon him moments later when he discovers his friend is dead, this is arguably a visual joke suggesting he should tread carefully. Indeed, it is Holly’s disregard for the systems at work in Vienna which lead him into so much trouble.

The film’s night sequences were shot night-for-night with hard light and high contrast. Rarely are we more aware of the conflict between light and dark - both visually and morally - than during the various chases amongst Vienna’s ruins. The use of shadows is a technique familiar to film noir creating disproportionate feelings of tension and confusion. A good example of this is the old balloon seller who approaches during the stake out for Lime: his giant shadow appears first and the viewer is led to believe, through the pacing of the editing and the reaction of Calloway and Paine, that this could be Lime. When the small figure of an elderly balloon seller appears, we are reminded again how appearances can deceive. Earlier, when a drunken Holly first sees Lime, he chases his shadow to a large square whereupon Lime disappears. As we saw Lime buried early in the film, the fact that Holly chases not Lime, but his shadow, is perhaps of symbolic value for he is effectively chasing a ghost. When Holly recounts his story to Major Callahan he admits how incredulous the story appears. However, because the audience also saw Lime, in ‘one of cinema’s most famous reveals’2 the viewer sides with a drunken man over common sense and a figure of authority. This is an example of the strength of realism: the viewer puts its faith in the visual language of the film for there are no reasons to suspect the camera would lie.

One method of conveying meaning visually is through the use of props, particularly when associated with characters. Lime is identified through his cat, which, in the scene mentioned above, nuzzles against his shiny black shoes. On the one hand it lets the wily viewer realise who this is, for we are told in the previous scene that the cat only likes Lime. In addition it says something about his character: the contradiction of a man who casually causes death and madness amongst children having an affectionate relationship with a small animal. Baron Kurtz, who appears to aspire more to ‘the old Vienna before the war, with it’s Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm’ is associated with a small dog which is carried with him, and during Holly’s visit to Dr Winkel’s flat, it briefly appears. This is a clever device, for without showing Kurtz’s presence at Winkel’s dinner party we are aware that he must be a guest. That Winkel does not mention this arouses the viewer’s suspicion that the witnesses to Lime’s death may in some way be working together. Here is an example where meaning can be derived from what is seen as much as what is not seen, for the lingering shot of a silver knife hovering over a roasted chicken is the only image we get of Winkel’s dinner party. The viewer is left to decide whom are the guests sitting around Winkel’s table.

Whilst this is not a film about childhood, there are visual reminders of it, perhaps because Harry and Holly’s relationship started as children. Whilst Holly questions the porter about Lime’s death, a rubber ball bounces into the room followed by Hansel, his son. Later after his father has been killed, Hansel, still clutching the ball, accusing Holly for the murder. Paul Driver describes the boy as ‘a horrific dwarf, yet an oddly lifelike portrayal of a shrieking child’3 and he acts as a reminder to Holly of the dangerous world he is mixing up in. Later in the film the viewer is spared from seeing the resultant horrors of Lime’s penicillin racket; instead the camera centres on an unclaimed teddy bear. The choice of a fairground as meeting point for Holly and Lime also reminds us of the children of Vienna as we see an empty carousel. Here visual metaphor would seem to allude to betrayed or lost innocence: that of Lime’s as a child, of Holly as he discovers his friend’s darker side, and the children who died from Lime’s black market penicillin.