The Third Man
Carol Reed
Initial release: September 1, 1949 (UK)
If you asked me to compile a list of what I think the best, most important films noir of the "classic" era (commonly accepted to be around 1944 to around 1960, though I would argue the era expands somewhat beyond this limited range) then I am absolutely putting Carol Reed's The Third Man at the top.
Reed was a veteran filmmaker with several wartime film credits including The Way Ahead, a 1944 propaganda piece, and the action-thriller Night Train to Munich (1940). By the end of the 1940s, Reed had become one of Britain's preeminent filmmakers. The Third Man would be the cap-off to a string of what would be his most famous films, following Odd Man Out (1947) and The Fallen Idol (1948). And like those films, The Third Man is full of fear and dread and razor-sharp tension.
The film brings us to post-war Vienna, Austria; like Germany and Berlin, Austria was divided and occupied by the Allied nations. Vienna was split into several sectors, each administered by one of the four occupying powers, with the center of town being handled jointly, with mixed police patrol units in an attempt at international unity. The city is still partially in ruins, and Austrians are collectively under suspicion. Into this diplomatic soup comes Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), a struggling pulp writer from America. He's here because an old friend, Harry Lime, offered him a job, but he gets there just after Lime was killed in a car accident. Attending Lime's funeral, he begins to search the city for answers. Everything he hears about Lime is bad news; even Lime's girlfriend, despite missing him terribly, doesn't want him back. And yet Martins keeps going, in search of a truth even he isn't sure he wants to hear.
Reed makes use of stark chiaroscuro and Dutch angles to present a labyrinthine city of secrets and lies. Even the city's sewers play a role, sprawling and cavernous, with a cameo from the city's real-life police unit dedicated wholly to patrolling the undercity. With a stacked cast, including Orson Welles as one of the most unbelievably evil bastards ever committed to film (quite the feat after his role as a cold, calculating Nazi fugitive in The Stranger.)
The soundtrack is unique; avoiding the orchestral score typical to the period, or even the stereotypical jazz associated with the noir genre, instead, Austrian zither player Anton Karas provides the score, bright and springy in sharp contrast to the moody action on screen. It somehow works, emphasizing the almost alien feel of Austria, a country quite far away from the film's target audiences in the UK and the US.
The Third Man is peak noir; it's a film that fires on all cylinders, with great characters, great cinematography, a great script. Reed was a master filmmaker and this film is by almost any metric his masterpiece.