The Third Man

Carol Reed’s The Third Man came top in the British Film Institute’s 1999 poll of the greatest British films of all time. It’s not hard to see why with Graham Greene’s taut noir screenplay, Robert Krasker’s beautiful, expressionist camerawork through the dark streets of post-war Vienna to the haunting zither score by Anton Karas and Orson Welles in perhaps the most famous cameo performance in film history. An out of work pulp fiction novelist, Holly Martins arrives in Vienna at the invitation of an ex-school friend, Harry Lime where a shortage of supplies has led to a flourishing black market.

‘This will haunt you. The style, the plot, the character and of course …that tune…’ William Thomas, Empire

‘Of all the movies I have seen, this one most completely embodies the romance of going to the movies.’ Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times