The Third Man (1949)

In the immediate postwar, a four-way divided Vienna is a haven for smugglers, counterfeiters, and black marketeers.

Enter Pulp Western writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) who was offered a job by his friend Harry Lime, except that when he gets there it is just in time for Lime’s funeral.

The cops (Trevor Howard & Bernard Lee) hint that Lime was not only crooked (and who cares, really, since everyone else is,) but that he was an actual murderer; and based on this unsavory connection they pressure Martins to leave, except that, (when free lodging is offered in exchange for a writing seminar,) he decides instead to prolong his stay and clear his much beloved childhood buddy’s name.

Martins tracks down various witnesses (and near witnesses) and even gets to meet and interview Anna Schmidt, an actress present at the cemetery (Alida Valli.)

Interrogating even only a few reveals many inconsistencies with the official report: Lime was either immediately dead, or soon after dead, or died after being able to leave instructions to provide for a couple of people close to him… Which is it?

Also, it becomes apparent that everyone who was near Lime at the moment of death was somehow affiliated with him, (incredulously, even including the guy who ran him over!) with not even one single accidental stranger present other than the mysterious, titular third man whose identity remained unknown.

The cops keep telling Martins to leave and he doggedly keeps after the case, stubbornly refusing to do so and getting deeper and deeper in trouble, despite his own reassuring Americanness, (non-Americans seem not be not wanted in various zones depending on their respective origins,) to the point that he is accused of murder himself.

An interesting twist on Film Noir where rather than a ‘femme fatale’ we get a ‘homme fatale’, that is a male character other characters (male and female) obsess about and who inevitably leads them to their doom.

Immediately recognized zither-based theme music; stylish, atmospheric, expressionistic (Dutch angles, harsh lights, backlit silhouettes and gigantic, exaggerated human shadows); a constant stream of strange faces looking suspiciously at all that happens (even a cherubic little kid, his voice accusing Martins of murder, becomes a force of chaos); and a classic chase and confrontation down the Viennese sewers, a fitting end for what is ultimately revealed to be human offal.

Water is supposed to wash away our sins but in this case what we are discussing here is a river of pure sewage.

Spoiler! Also, with Orson Welles (who is quite the presence, despite barely being in the movie.)

Suspenseful, romantic (Schmidt, though she insists is much in love with Lime keeps getting the names Harry and Holly confused,) and funny (Cotten gets bit by a parrot at one point.)

A masterwork.