Editing Carol Reed (section)

==Post-war==
Reed made his three most highly regarded films just after the war, beginning with ''[[Odd Man Out]]'' (1947), with [[James Mason]] in the lead. It is the tale of an injured IRA leader's last hours in an unidentified Northern Irish city. In fact, [[Belfast]] was used for the location work, but it remains unnamed in the film. Filmmaker [[Roman Polanski]] has repeatedly cited it as his favourite film.<ref>Roman Polanski: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, 2005. {{ISBN|978-1-57806-800-5}}. Pages 159, 189.</ref>

It was the producer [[Alexander Korda]], to whom Reed was now signed, who introduced the director to the novelist [[Graham Greene]].<ref name="Hogg2">Trevor Hogg [http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2009/10/great-reed-carol-reed-profile-part-2.html "A Great Reed: A Carol Reed Profile (Part 2)"], ''Flickering Myths'', 28 October 2009</ref> The next two films were made from screenplays by Greene: ''[[The Fallen Idol (film)|The Fallen Idol]]'' (1948) and ''[[The Third Man]]'' (1949).

''The Third Man'' was co-produced by [[David O. Selznick]] and Korda, with the American actors [[Orson Welles]] and [[Joseph Cotten]] in two of the leading roles. Reed insisted on casting Welles as Harry Lime, although Selznick had wanted [[Noël Coward]] for the role. The film required six weeks of location work in [[Vienna]], during which Reed by chance discovered [[Anton Karas]], the zither player who became responsible for the film's music, in a courtyard outside a small Viennese restaurant.<ref name="Hogg2"/>

Reed once said: "A picture should end as it has to. I don't think anything in life ends 'right'". While Greene wanted Holly Martins (Cotten) and Anna Schmidt ([[Alida Valli]]) to reconcile at the end of the film, after Lime, her lover, is killed by Martins, Reed insisted that Anna should ignore him and walk on. "The whole point of the Valli character in that film is that she'd experienced a fatal love – and then comes along this silly American!"<ref name="Hogg2"/>

According to the film critic [[Derek Malcolm]], ''The Third Man'' is the "best film noir ever made out of Britain".<ref name="Malcolm"/> The film won the Grand Prix at the [[Cannes Film Festival]],<ref name="Feehan"/> the predecessor of the [[Palme d'Or]].