The Third Man

Holly Martins, an American author of pulp Western novels, arrives in the British sector of Allied-occupied postwar Vienna expecting a job from his childhood friend Harry Lime. He is met at the airport with the news that Lime has just been killed by a car while crossing the street. At the funeral, Martins encounters two Field Security Section officers: Sergeant Paine, an admiring fan of his novels, and the brusque Major Calloway. Martins is also asked to give a lecture at a local book club in the coming days.

Martins meets 'Baron' Kurtz, a friend of Lime's, who explains that he and another associate named Popescu carried Lime's body to the pavement after the accident, and that Lime's dying wish was for them to look after Martins and his girlfriend, actress Anna Schmidt. But as Martins and Anna compare notes about the incident, they find the accounts contradictory—witnesses disagree about whether Lime spoke before he died and how many men were present. The porter of Lime's apartment building tells them he witnessed a third man helping to carry the body, but before he can say more he is murdered, and a hostile crowd briefly turns on Martins as a suspect.

Martins confronts Calloway and presses for an investigation, but Calloway turns the tables: he reveals that Lime had been systematically stealing penicillin from military hospitals, diluting it with inert substances, and selling it on the black market—a racket that left scores of patients, many of them children, dead or brain-damaged. Shaken, Martins agrees to drop his inquiry and leave Vienna.

That night, drunk, Martins visits Anna and confesses his feelings for her. As he leaves her building he notices Anna's cat following a man lurking in a darkened doorway across the street. A momentary flash of light reveals the man's face: it is Harry Lime. Martins calls out, but Lime vanishes into the night. Martins alerts Calloway, who deduces that Lime has been moving through Vienna's labyrinthine sewer network to stay in the Soviet sector. A police exhumation of Lime's coffin confirms the deception: the body buried under Lime's name belongs to a hospital orderly who had been his accomplice. Meanwhile, it emerges that Anna is Czech and has been living under a forged Austrian passport; the British authorities plan to hand her over to the Soviets.

Martins arranges through Kurtz to meet Lime. The two old friends ride the Wiener Riesenrad, the great Viennese Ferris wheel, high above the fairground. Lime speaks coolly about his crimes, gesturing at the tiny figures below and suggesting that their deaths are negligible against the profit involved—invoking, with chilling cynicism, the era of the Borgias and the cuckoo clock. Martins realizes that Lime himself betrayed Anna to the Soviet authorities to keep her from becoming a liability. Lime lightly threatens Martins—he is now the only living proof of Lime's survival—but when Martins reveals that Calloway already knows about the false burial, Lime instead invites him to join the scheme before slipping away.

Calloway asks Martins to help set a trap for Lime, and Martins agrees on one condition: that Calloway arrange for Anna to leave Vienna for Paris rather than be surrendered to the Soviets. The British authorities comply. But at the train station, Anna spots Martins watching and, after pressing him, extracts the plan; she then hurries off to warn Lime. Disgusted and defeated, Martins decides to give up and take a flight out. On the way to the airport, Calloway makes an unscheduled stop at a children's hospital ward, showing Martins the young patients suffering from meningitis—the direct result of Lime's adulterated penicillin. The sight changes Martins's mind.

Lime arrives at a café in the international zone for his planned meeting with Martins, but Anna's warning reaches him in time. He bolts into the city's sewer system. Police pursue him through the dark, echoing tunnels beneath Vienna. In the chase, Lime shoots and kills Sergeant Paine; Calloway returns fire and badly wounds Lime. Gravely injured, Lime drags himself up a cast-iron stairway toward a street grating but lacks the strength to push it open. Martins, taking Paine's gun, races through the tunnels and finds Lime helpless beneath the grating. The two men stare at each other. Calloway, catching up, shouts to Martins to shoot on sight. Lime gives a barely perceptible nod. A single shot rings out.

Martins attends Harry Lime's second, genuine funeral, delaying his flight from Vienna. He waits by the road to the cemetery hoping to speak with Anna. She walks the long straight avenue toward him—and passes without a glance.

Sources: Wikipedia