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When American author Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives in post-war Vienna looking for his friend Harry Lime, his investigation quickly becomes laced with danger. A Graham Greene penned thriller set in the contested Austrian capital, The Third Man is a cynical noir where nearly every individual element of the film is iconic in its own right: the singular zither soundtrack, the spellbinding introduction of the villainous Harry Lime (along with Orson Welles's reptilian charm in the role), the Dutch angles, and Lime's classic monologue on the Ferris Wheel. It all comes together to create a terrifically entertaining noir tinged by director Carol Reed's off-beat European sensibility.