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. The screenplay, by Graham Greene, was adapted from his own novella written specifically for the film during a Vienna research trip. The Third Man sits permanently in the highest tier of British-cinema canons and topped 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 discover that Harry was killed crossing the road in a circumstance that does not quite make sense. The investigation that follows leads through the ruined city's black-market penicillin trade, across the British, French, American and Soviet sectors, and into the Vienna sewers. Trevor Howard plays the British military-police major Calloway; Alida Valli is Anna, Harry's lover, whose loyalties remain unresolved through the film's closing minutes.

Anton Karas's zither score — Reed discovered Karas playing in a heuriger and built the entire score around him — is one of the most distinctive musical signatures in cinema. Robert Krasker's Dutch-angled, neon-soaked night photography of Vienna established a visual register that is still being borrowed. Orson Welles's involvement, the use of Anton Karas's solo zither score (recorded across nightshift sessions in Vienna), and the deep-shadow Dutch-angle photography are all part of 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 is genuinely tragic rather than just plotty. The closing shot is among the most-cited in cinema.