The Invisible Border: “The Man Between”

“Wickedness,” Oscar Wilde wrote, “Is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.” Both The Third Man (1949) and The Man Between (1953), a film that suffers from perennial unfavorable comparison to Carol Reed’s earlier masterpiece, revolve around men whose attractiveness is inseparable from their amorality. But while Grahame Greene’s script for The Third Man ultimately strips away Harry Lime’s glamour, reducing him to a scurrying sewer-rat and a suicidal nihilist, The Man Between embraces the tragic romanticism of its more ambiguous anti-hero.