It's now as much of a cliché as it is an opinion, but Orson Welles' Citizen Kane—which he made in 1941, when he was 25 goddamn years old—comes up in any discussion about the best movies ever made. But 17 years later, Welles starred in Carol Reed's The Third Man—and that movie might be the better one. Nasty, clever, and with enough creepy shadows to choke a vampire, The Third Man is technically about writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), who pokes around Vienna looking for clues about his dead pal Harry Lime (Welles), but it's the charming, vicious Welles who steals the show. Few movies can match the exhilarating thrum that pulses through Reed's film—especially when Welles is onscreen.