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• Directors: David Lean
• Producers: Anthony Havelock Allan, Ronald Neame
• Writers: Anthony Havelock Allan, David Lean, Ronald Neame
• Genres: Romance, Drama
• Actors: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, Joyce Carey, Cyril Raymond, Everley Gregg

Laura Jesson (Johnson), a suburban housewife, tells her story in the first person whilst at home with her husband, imagining that she is confessing her affair to him.

Laura ventures into the nearby town of Milford once a week for shopping and to the cinema for a matinГ©e. Returning home from one of her weekly excursions, at the station she gets a piece of grit in her eye which is removed by another passenger, a doctor called Alec Harvey (Howard). Both are in early middle-age, married, and both have two children. The doctor is a general practitioner who also works one day a week as a consultant at the local hospital, but his passion is for preventive medicine, such as addressing the causes of respiratory illness in miners.

Enjoying each other’s company, the two arrange to meet again. They are soon troubled to find their innocent and casual relationship quickly developing into love.

For a while, they meet furtively, constantly fearing chance meetings with friends. After several meetings, they go to a room belonging to a friend (Valentine Dyall) of the doctor, but they are interrupted by the friend’s unexpected return. This brings home the fact that a future together is impossible and, wishing not to hurt their families, they agree to part. Besides, the doctor is considering leaving for Johannesburg, South Africa.

…

The film mentions neither the Second World War nor any of the hardships that it brings. While no character refers to a specific time, the fictional film within a film that Laura and Alec see, Flames of Passion, which is newly released, displays a copyright date of 1938. When Laura returns home following the first (and last) scene, her daughter wishes to see a pantomime, suggesting a setting in time during the weeks before Christmas. A further indication the film takes place in winter is that one scene appears to be set at night except that people greet each other with “good afternoon”.

• Directors: Carol Reed
• Producers: Alexander Korda, David O Selznick
• Writers: Graham Greene
• Genres: Film-Noir, Mystery, Thriller
• Actors: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard

In Austria’s capital city, Vienna, just after the Second World War, when the city is divided into separate zones controlled by the victorious Allied powers – Great Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union – American pulp western author Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives seeking an old friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles), who has offered him the opportunity to work with him in Vienna.

When he arrives at Lime’s apartment, Martins learns that Lime has been recently killed by a lorry while crossing the street. Shocked, he heads to the cemetery to attend Lime’s funeral, where he meets two British military police officers, Sergeant Paine (Bernard Lee), who is an enormous fan of Martins’ books, and his superior, Major Calloway (Trevor Howard). After the services, Calloway gives Martins a lift to his hotel and advises the American to leave Vienna as he can do nothing more than get himself into trouble.

At the hotel, Martins agrees to speak to the members of the local book club at the request of a British cultural official, Crabbin (Wilfrid Hyde-White). He also arranges a meeting with a friend of Lime’s, Baron Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch). Martins meets the man in the Mozart CafГ© to discuss Lime’s death. Kurtz relates that he and Popescu (Siegfried Breuer), another friend of Lime’s, had picked him up and brought him over to the side of the street, where he had asked them to take care of Martins and Anna (Alida Valli), Lime’s actress girlfriend. Kurtz tells Martins which theatre Anna works in, but advises against investigating.

…

During the shooting of the film, the final scene was the subject of a dispute between Greene, who wanted the happy ending of the novella, and Selznick and Reed, who stubbornly refused to end the film on what they felt was an artificially happy note. This is one of the few areas where Reed and Selznick did not clash during the production.[citation needed]