The Third Man is perhaps the greatest war film. It is not a frivolous tale of “boys’ own” adventure or a grim reenactment of horror but a weary depiction of what comes afterwards for the broken men and women, living in broken cities, who have seen and done terrible things to survive. Vienna itself, still bomb scarred and divided between four rival powers, seems to be reeling as much as its inhabitants.

Thrown into this maelstrom of rubble and broken humanity is Holly Martins, a naive American novelist who believes that, just like his pulp westerns, the world can be easily divided into good and evil. The Europeans who have lived through the war and its aftermath know that the two are merely opposite ends of a spectrum.

Harry Lime is, of course, a monster by any measure, but Holly could never understand why Lime has become this man, or why Anna will always love him. If he had stopped to think about her as a real person, rather than as a love object, he would realise how traumatised she must be and why she will never share his optimistic worldview.

So much of the film’s psychology is expressed in its strange lighting and skewed camera angles, which give The Third Man a look that is oddly reminiscent of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Nosferatu. This is a world in which balloon sellers look like monsters and small boys look like goblins. Holly could never fit in a place like this, and everyone seems to know it.

This was my first watch, and I knew very little about the film other than Harry Lime’s iconic introduction, which is still utterly magical. I was therefore surprised to find that the plot is driven by the investigation into his apparent death, with Orson Welles therefore having a much smaller role than I expected. He certainly makes up for it, though. Whether it is his speech about war and suffering spurring great human achievements, or his attempt to escape through the sewers like a wounded rat, Lime is one of cinema’s great antiheroes.

The Third Man is a cynical film that gives the lie to so many representations of war. Watching in 2023, it is impossible not to think of cities such as Mariupol or Zaporizhzhia. War is not Hollywood’s myth of derring-do, adventure and glory; it is tired men and women, military and civilian alike, doing whatever it takes to survive. This is as true now as it was in 1949.