The Third Man

Cited by the British Film Institute as the greatest British film ever made, Carol Reed’s adaptation of Graham Greene’s script sees American pulp novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) travelling to Allied-occupied Vienna to take on a job offered to him by his old school friend, Harry Lime (one of Orson Welles’s most memorable screen appearances). Arriving to find that Lime has been declared dead days before and confronted with conflicting stories about the man he knew, Martins’s suspicions are raised. He sets out to discover the truth behind his friend’s death, though nothing is what it seems. The atmospheric expressionist cinematography of Robert Krasker and Anton Karas’s unforgettable score contribute to making The Third Man the enduring wonder it is.