The Third Man

Calloway:
Go home Martins, like a sensible chap. You don't know what you're mixing in, get the next plane.

Martins:
As soon as I get to the bottom of this, I'll get the next plane.

Calloway:
Death's at the bottom of everything, Martins. Leave death to the professionals.

Martins:
Mind if I use that line in my next Western?

Anna Schmidt:
A person doesn't change just because you find out more.

Martins:
Listen, Callahan!

Calloway:
Calloway. I'm English, not Irish.

Martins:
Have you ever seen any of your victims?

Harry Lime:
You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays.

Popescue:
That's a nice girl, that. But she ought to go careful in Vienna. Everybody ought to go careful in a city like this.

Martins:
I guess nobody really knew Harry like he did... like I did.

Calloway:
How long ago ?

Martins:
Back in school. I was never so lonesome in my life until he showed up.

Calloway:
When did you see him last ?

Martins:
September, '39.

Calloway:
When the business started ?

Martins:
Um, hmm.

Calloway:
See much of him before that ?

Martins:
Once in a while. Best friend I ever had.

Calloway:
That sounds like a cheap novelette.

Martins:
Well, I write cheap novelettes.

Calloway:
Next time we'll have a foolproof coffin.

Harry Lime:
Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.

Calloway:
We should have dug deeper than a grave.

Porter:
He is now [points up] in hell, or [points down] in heaven.

Crabbin:
[inviting Holly Martins to give a lecture at the local Cultural Reeducation Society] We do a little show each week. Last week we had "Hamlet." The week before we had... something.

Sgt. Paine:
The striptease, sir.

Crabbin:
Yes, the Hindu dancers. Thank you, sergeant.

Anna Schmidt:
You know, you ought to get yourself a girl.

British MP:
I'm sorry, Miss, it's orders. We can't go against the protocol.

Anna Schmidt:
I don't even know what protocol means.

British MP:
Neither do I, Miss.

Calloway:
[to Holly Martins] You were born to be murdered.

Opening narrator:
I never knew the old Vienna before the war with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm. Constantinople suited me better. [Scenes of black market goods changing hands] I really got to know it in the classic period of the black market. We'd run anything if people wanted it enough and had the money to pay. Of course a situation like that does tempt amateurs [Dead body seen floating in the river] but, well, you know, they can't stay the course like a professional.

Opening narrator:
Now the city is divided into four zones, you know, each occupied by a power: the American, the British, the Russian and the French. But the centre of the city that's international policed by an international patrol. One member of each of the four powers. Wonderful! What a hope they had! All strangers to the place and none of them could speak the same language. Except a sort of smattering of German.

Opening narrator:
Good fellows on the whole, did their best you know. Vienna doesn't really look any worse than a lot of other European cities. Bombed about a bit.

Opening narrator:
Oh, I was going to tell you, wait, I was going to tell you about Holly Martins, an American. Came all the way here to visit a friend of his. The name was Lime, Harry Lime. Now Martins was broke and Lime had offered him, some sort, I don't know, some sort of job.

Opening narrator:
Anyway, there he was, poor chap. Happy as a lark and without a cent.

Harry Lime:
What did you want me to do? Be reasonable. You didn't expect me to give myself up... 'It's a far, far better thing that I do.' The old limelight. The fall of the curtain. Oh, Holly, you and I aren't heroes. The world doesn't make any heroes outside of your stories.

Calloway:
I told you to go away, Martins. This isn't Santa Fe. I'm not a sheriff and you aren't a cowboy. You've been blundering around with the worst bunch of racketeers in Vienna, your precious Harry's friends, and now you're wanted for murder.

Martins:
Put down drunk and disorderly too.

Calloway:
I have.

Harry Lime:
Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't. Why should we? They talk about the people and the proletariat, I talk about the suckers and the mugs - it's the same thing. They have their five-year plans, so have I.

Martins:
You used to believe in God.

Harry Lime:
Oh, I still do believe in God, old man. I believe in God and Mercy and all that. But the dead are happier dead. They don't miss much here, poor devils.

Martins:
I'd make comic faces... and stand on my head and grin at you between my legs... and tell all sorts of jokes. I wouldn't stand a chance, would I?

Martins:
I was going to stay with him, but he died Thursday.

Crabbin:
Goodness, that's awkward.

Martins:
Is that what you say to people after death? "Goodness, that's awkward"?

Martins:
Oh, Anna, why do we always... have to quarrel?

Anna Schmidt:
If you want to sell your services, I'm not willing to be the price. I loved him. You loved him. What good have we done him? Love. Look at yourself.They have a name for faces like that.

Calloway:
It had meningitis. They gave it some of Lime's penicillin. Terrible pity isn't it.