Anonymous asked: I know "Haven't got a sensible name, Calloway" is the last line in "The Third Man", but what does the line mean in the movie? If Martins is saying, "I'm not a sensible person," then why say "I haven't got a sensible name?" For Greene, it wouldn't seem to make sense, I think. What am I missing? Thanks!
anna’s last words to holly in the movie are in the cafe where holly is planning to meet/entrap harry lime: “holly. what a silly name. you must be so very proud to be a police informant.” it’s a partic harsh thing to say because anna’s attitude to holly through the entire movie has been fondly but distantly patronizing—treating him the same way vienna treats him, as silly; out-of-place; laughable. she’s hung out with him because he’s the only connection she has to her supposedly dead lover and she’s barely noticed him falling in love w her himself. he is so inadequate and fumbling and boneheadedly unappreciative of the complexities of the situation that even her cat doesn’t like him and even his name is silly. (not to mention it is almost “harry”; in fact anna calls him harry at least once. a silly version of harry. a pathetic substitute.) now because she’s furious and scared she’s viciously making this explicit for the first time. but it’s always been there, even when she was being nice. when holly sees anna on the road later after lime’s (second) funeral, calloway tells him to be sensible, the way he’s basically been telling him to be sensible through the whole movie, and to drive on. but holly doesn’t (apparently stranding himself in vienna? does he miss his plane again?) because he’s not sensible, at least not in the context of nihilistic postapocalyptic vienna; he’s silly; even his name is silly. for “silly” here read whatever you want from the cluster: naive; idealistic; american; prewar. not postmodern enough. but moral! or is he? ought he to have betrayed his friend? certainly anna’s walking past him seems fair. actually i think it really is ridiculous of him to get out of the car. cut yr losses man. anyway: i have a strange first name and often feel alienated! but i never update this tumblr, so thanks for asking this question.
