Fleapit revisited:The Third Man.

"The dead are happier dead. They don't miss much here" - Harry Lime

Carol Reed's 1949 film The Third Man (adapted from a Graham Greene novella, shown last night on BBC4 and still available on the iPlayer) is famous for its scenes of Viennese Ferris wheels, specifically the Wiener Riesenrad, and sewers, Anton Karas's wonderful Austrian zither soundtrack, and for the speech Harry Lime (Orson Welles) makes in defence of amorality. You know the one:-

"In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo de Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock".

It is, however, also noteworthy for being one of the best British film noirs ever made. Perhaps the best. The Britain that made it was not an isolationist, exceptionalist, Britain but one that was very much part of Europe. A Mitteleuropa of trams, cobbled streets, statues, and fountains and one, too, of cold war paranoia where even mentions of Russia and Czechoslovakia arouse instant suspicion.

Post-war Vienna has been divided into four zones (British, French, American, and Soviet as with Berlin) and into a city so defined by its aerial bomb damage that it could qualify as exceptional ruin porn arrives an American pulp novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten - who wears the same wool suit grey v-neck, white shirt, and crumpled tie for the entire film for some reason).

He's in Vienna to meet an old friend, Harry Lime, about a job but he's arrived at an unfortunate time. Lime's been killed in a road accident. At least he's there in time for the funeral. An event at which he meets with two British Royal Military Police. Sergeant Paine (Bernard Lee) who's a fan of Martins' 'cheap novelettes' and Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) who it seems safe to assume is not.

Martins loved Lime, Calloway (who Martins, intentionally or not, insists on calling Callaghan, much to his chagrin) resolutely did not and slowly Martins is introduced to others who shed a different light on Lime's life in Vienna. None of whom wear an outfit quite as outlandish as Calloway's hooded duffel coat and beret combo.

If Howard had worn that for Brief Encounter, it'd have been a different story. Baron Kurtz (Ernst Deutch), a friend of Lime's, Mr Crabbin (Wilfred Hyde-White), a representative for cultural propaganda, Karl (Paul Horbiger), a porter, Dr Winkel (Erich Ponto), Lime's medical advisor and a man who affectedly blows dust from his ornaments as he speaks, and Popescu (Siegfried Breuer), a suave Romanian who was present at the scene of Lime's death all muddy an already unclear picture as Martins tries to piece together the jigsaw of Lime's death - and Lime's life.

Reports of a mysterious "third man" at the scene of the accident seem only to lead Martins into a subterranean world of Vienna's worst racketeers (Penicillin and tyres, apparently, being particularly lucrative businesses). The metaphorical underground world of Viennese crime is given its analogue in the sewers in which Martins find himself.

Entrances to nowhere, ricocheting voices, and uncertain gunshot add further menace to a film already full of shadows and ever so slightly skewed camera angles. Just enough to give a sense of both unease and the uncanny. Lime's ex-girlfriend Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli) appears to have the answers but as she's an actress by trade can she even be trusted?

Schmidt claims she doesn't believe Lime's death was an accident and, as her, Valli acts the men off the screen. She's fantastic. Managing to say more with a sideways, or despondent downwards, glance than many manage with lengthy monologues. More than Cotten, she is the star of the picture but she, necessarily, shares that distinction with Vienna itself.

Crumbling Art Nouveau piles, staircases spiral or square, and long drinks to the sound of jazz in Secessionist hotel bars, The Third Man is a very cosmopolitan noir but, thankfully, it's not a case of all style and no substance. As Martins' investigations lead him to the Prater amusement park in Leopoldstadt, the story of what happened to Lime becomes clearer and Martins finds himself implicit in events. An innocent abroad, confused not just by the German language but the machinations of humanity and the levels of ruthlessness that desperate men will sink to. Can Martins, now he knows the truth, do the right thing?