Writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives in war-torn Vienna to take up a job with his friend Harry Lime. He is informed that Lime died a week previously in a car accident, but upon investigating further discovers that the circumstance's of Lime's death are shrouded in confusion. Martins begins to wonder just how well he knew his old friend after the head of local military police, Major Calloway (Trevor Howard), convinces him that Lime was in fact a black market drug racketeer responsible for many deaths. Some of this film's many re-writes may be attributed to Orson Welles, who stars as Harry Lime.