https://sites.tufts.edu/amandalee2026/2025/02/27/week-7-the-third-man-carol-reed/

Some interesting thoughts from Amanda here, though I think she's wrong about the idea that a woman can't be the protagonist in a film noir without being a villain. (She simply hasn't seen enough of them to see how there can be exceptions to what might seem like a general rule. Of course, it's often true that the featured women who aren't villains are often victims or "woman in distress/peril," which is not a situation brimming over with agency.

THE THIRD MAN is a slippery fit for a film course built around the idea of "noir and the American tradition," given its setting and how Holly Martens is the only link to America in the film. There is contrast to be found there, to be sure--it's one of the things that helps to send Harry Lime to his doom. Amanda found a way into some of the lingering (now pressing) problems between men and women when examining the relations of the troika involved in the "displaced love triangle," however, and she does a solid job of explicating those ideas.