#13: Expatriate Noir: The Third Man (1949) and Night and the City (1950)

"‘Your national mind,’ said he, ‘has no eyelids. It requires a broad glare and a beaten road. It prefers shadows which you can cut out with a knife.’"
- a British diplomat's view of the United States in Henry Adams’ Democracy: An American Novel
 

Opportunity amidst the ruins of postwar London and Vienna. Old World ideals and cowboy novel idealism are either defeated or tossed as a joke. All focus on the profiteering American. Both films lurk in cynicism, shadow, and extreme angles; up through a final chase.

Picture via.