This year I started my annual film noir binge-bender a few days early.

It’s a tradition I usually reserve for the first two weeks of January, that post-New Years comedown stretch we’re all overwhelmingly familiar with. I’ve found that the subtle feelings of gloom and anxiety that come attached to this time of year go hand in hand with the general atmosphere and mood of film noir. By default, many of us tend to begin each year in the shadow, an element film noir couldn’t exist without.

The film that got me to break protocol and start my binge early was Carol Reed’s The Third Man. Up until now, I’ve somehow always overlooked the film, despite its longstanding critical praise as one of the all time greats in the noir genre, if not the greatest.

Set in Vienna in the immediate aftermath of World War II, The Third Man centers on Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), a disillusioned pulp-western writer who visits the city at the bequest of his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to find Lime murdered under vague circumstances. He begins poking his nose around the city’s criminal underworld, becoming further wrapped in a sinister web of conspiracy and lies as he closes in on the unsettling truth.

It’s the quintessential film noir plot outline, perfected to a tee this time around by screenwriter/novelist and verified M16 agent Graham Greene. Murder, doomed romance, dark and brooding dialogue (see: Orson Welles’ “cuckoo clock” speech); it’s all there. The real gold, however, lies in the film’s visual components.

Cinematographer Robert Krasker’s extensive use of the “dutch angle” (fancy talk for tilting the camera) is meant to purposefully disorient and mislead the viewer; his harsh and uncomplimentary lighting techniques act as a symbolic equalizer of sorts, pointing out that in this story, there are no heroes; and on an even deeper level, his ominous, shadow-drenched shots have been likened to a form of expressionism intended to draw emotional parallels to post-war cynicism in Vienna.

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The Third Man is this week’s Friday Night Flick. It’s Carol Reed’s masterpiece, and Orson Welles second best performance as an actor (he never topped Citizen Kane). If you only watch one classic noir film in your lifetime, make it this one. However, you’ll soon realize you can’t watch just one; the binge is inevitable. —Jackson Todd