The Third Man
If this movie doesn’t glamorize the life of black-market profiteers in immediate post-WWII Vienna, then no movie ever did. Joseph Cotten plays Holly Martins, a “scribbler with too much drink in him,” trying to clear the name of his recently deceased best friend, the nefarious Harry Lime (Orson Welles, at his cherubic pinnacle). The acting, music, photography, and dialogue (script by Graham Greene, the British author, not the Native American actor) are peerless.
by Sean Nelson
