I know this is going to cause even more people to think I’m a Neanderthal or just to despise me for my lack of taste and refinement but I can’t help it.

So based on a posting by Andrew Stuttaford – whose writings I greatly admire — I rented “The Third Man.”

Yes, it’s cinematically beautiful. And yes, it evokes the mysterious and intriguing atmosphere of post-war Vienna. And yes, I liked the zither music – though it seemed more reminiscent of the Mediterranean than of Vienna.

But at the end of the day (or the end of the movie): Shouldn’t Graham Greene have been horse-whipped? The plot is about as coherent as a John Kerry position paper.

For example, it makes no sense that Anna and Holly would have such affection for Harry Lime, and that it then turns out that yes, Major Calloway is right: Harry Lime is indeed a baby killer who steals penicillin and then waters it down so that it turns from medicine to poison.

(Anna keeps saying to the Major: “You’ve got it all upside down.” And I kept trying to see how to turn it right, how to solve the mystery. But there is no mystery. The surprise is there is no surprise.)

What kind of scheme did Harry cook up? If you’re going to sell bogus penicillin why bother stealing real penicillin? And how many kids have to get sick before the hospital staff figures it out?

Also: Why would Harry have a job for Holly, a writer of Western fiction, in his penicillin-stealing-and-watering-down-and-selling-it-to-hospitals-to-give-to-kids scheme? What use could he have been to Harry? He didn’t even speak German.

And why would Harry bring him over to Vienna just when he was planning to fake his own death?

And why would Harry think Holly would be so depraved as to help him kill kids for cash anyway?

And since that scheme was finally blown, how is Harry making a buck now?

Shouldn’t Anna be at least a tad shocked when she finds out what her lover was doing? Shouldn’t she have an opinion on it?

And shouldn’t she be upset that he staged his death, didn’t tell her, and ditched her instead? Wouldn’t that at least be something she’d discuss with Holly?

When Holly first sees Harry in the doorway, why does Harry run? What was he doing in that doorway anyhow? Who was he waiting for if not Holly or Anna?

The cat? Why does the cat love Harry? Seriously, in films animals love people because they sense those people have a good heart. Harry doesn’t have a good heart. He’s a heartless murderer who would sell a cat to an all-you-can-eat restaurant.

If Harry doesn’t want to see Holly – he runs away after being spotted in the doorway –why does he change his mind the next day and meet with him?

Whatever else Harry may be, he’s a smart cookie. Surely he knows he hasn’t sold Holly on the logic of killing kids for cash based on his soliloquy on the Ferris wheel, when he explains the Camus-lite view of the world that he’s now adopted. Surely, he knows that Holly doesn’t agree that children are just black dots lacking any meaning and value, so killing them is no biggie. So why does Harry go to meet with Holly again? What would be the upside? And how could he not see the downside risk?

Was Harry the third man who helped carry the dead body – which I suppose was really Harbin – across the street?

Did no one see the body before it was put into the coffin?

At the start of the movie, we hear from a narrator – a cynical Brit in some way involved in the black market. He seems like an interesting character. Who is he? Why do we never hear from him again?

At the end of the film I had four words running through my mind: Honey, get me rewrite!

But if someone can answer the questions above, I’ll be very grateful. And I’ll rent it a second – even a third – time.