The Third Man

It’s all neatly sewn together and recalls the early Hitchcock spy chasers, The Lady Vanishes and the 39 Steps. The playing is fitted nicely to the director’s and writer’s specifications and there are some appealing portraits limned by Austrian actors.

Seventy years on such sombreness seems timely, as does Harry Lime, Welles's deliciously elusive antihero.

Krasker's camera reveals a dank, matte, defeated city - so dully vivid as to be a character unto itself - except that this Vienna becomes something altogether different seen at night or underground.

Reed and screenwriter Graham Greene let the story unfold slowly and deliberately, like the cigarette smoke that floats around the characters, and keep us guessing at every step.

Like many, I have loved this thriller of conscience and betrayal most of my moviegoing life.

This is a film which does away with such cretinous inanity as offering up goodies and baddies, instead presenting its cast of characters as doing things which they believe to be good, but are not seen as such through the eyes of observers.

One of those rare birds that improves with subsequent viewings, which is saying a lot since an initial viewing immediately pegs it as a cinematic masterpiece.

In a film born out of rebuilding the future, Green, Reed, and the entire cast produce the fatalism of idealism of what a just world should have been, but that this life is, as always, a zero-sum game.

Seamless in its entertainment factor and compelling long after the end credits roll, The Third Man is a cornerstone of British cinema and will be considered as such for generations to come.

The director, Carol Reed, weaves together various cinematic techniques to create an almost entirely unique experience, one that at times, almost feels like a showreel for what can be accomplished in the medium of film.