The Third Man

Carol Reed's The Third Man opened in 1949 and won the Grand Prix at the second Cannes Festival that year, alongside the Academy Award for Best Cinematography (Robert Krasker) and the BAFTA for Best British Film. Graham Greene adapted the screenplay from his own novella, written specifically for the film during a research trip to Vienna. The Third Man sits permanently in the top tier of British-cinema canons and headed the BFI's list of greatest British films at the turn of the millennium.

Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), an American writer of pulp Westerns, arrives in four-zone-occupied Vienna in 1947 for the funeral of his school friend Harry Lime, only to learn that Harry was killed crossing the road in circumstances that do not quite make sense. His questions lead him into the ruined city's black-market penicillin trade and back and forth across the British, French, American and Soviet sectors. Trevor Howard plays the British military-police major Calloway, and Alida Valli is Anna, Harry's lover, whose loyalties Martins can never quite read.

Reed discovered Anton Karas playing the zither in a heuriger and built the entire score around him, recording the solo zither across night-shift sessions in Vienna. The result is one of the most distinctive musical signatures in cinema. Robert Krasker's Dutch-angled, neon-soaked night photography of the city established a visual register that is still being borrowed. Along with Orson Welles's involvement, that zither and that deep-shadow photography belong to the canonical history of the medium.

Why it's an Editor's Pick: The greatest British film noir, and one of the very few thrillers whose central friendship carries as much weight as its plot. Its images of a ruined Vienna are among the most cited in cinema.