"Carol Reed's masterpiece, a thriller set in postwar Vienna, concerns Holly Martin (Joseph Cotten) and his search for his mysterious friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) through the four war zones of the ruined city. Summoned by Harry, Holly arrives to find...his friend dead and a trail of corruption spiraling across Vienna with Harry's signature on it. Broke, confused and alone, Holly is forced to confront his idealism, innocence, and the boundaries of friendship. Prodded by Major Calloway (Trevor Howard), Holly ultimately 'does right,' but one cannot help but feel that his heart's not really in it, that at some basic moral level Holly is really no better than Harry. Ultimately, however, any moral consideration of the film is secondary to its visual presentation. As (novelist-scriptwriter) Graham Greene has said, 'The Third Man was never written to be read but only seen.' As photographed by Robert Krasker, postwar Vienna comes eerily to life through its backlit streets; a train's departure indicated only by the light patterns of its windows projected across a cloud of steam; a cat brushing its whiskers against the shoe of a figure obscured by shadows; and the film's final scene, a magnificent chase through the labyrinthine sewers of the city." Diane Gysbers