Odd Man Out
Carol Reed (1947)
The first hour is superb – wonderfully conceived and executed action sequences vivified by the meaning of the characters that people them. (There are moments that seem to anticipate sequences twenty years later in Bonnie and Clyde.) Carol Reed disclaimed any conscious political intentions in his choice of projects; he was primarily interested in human beings facing difficult situations and that’s explicitly stated here in the introductory legend. But Odd Man Out follows The Stars Look Down in dealing with politically controversial material. This contemporary portrait of members of a revolutionary group (referred to simply as ‘the organisation’) in an unnamed town in Northern Ireland is sympathetic because the members of the group are fully and, in the case of the man played by Cyril Cusack, brilliantly characterised. The effect isn’t the same as in The Stars Look Down, which seems to deliver a stronger and more complex social message because Reed’s treatment is humanist rather than political. Here the focus is on a man, motivated by but subsequently detached from political action – and increasingly a poor, bare, forked creature. He is the group’s leader Johnny (James Mason), wounded and left behind after a botched wages snatch. The film describes the succeeding hours of his life and the various encounters the hours contain.
These meetings are more or less symbolic; one of them – with two London women who have recently moved to the town –.is distinguished by a performance by Fay Compton of great concentration and force. The film loses momentum in an overlong sequence in a priest’s house and comes close to unravelling when a loony artist (Robert Newton – but the fault is in the character as much as in his habitual overacting) and his entourage take centre stage. It’s somehow typical of Odd Man Out that Johnny’s hallucinations as he stares into a pool of spilt beer on a pub table are more imaginative and convincing than the religiously flavoured ones he graduates to in the artist’s house. James Mason is impressive and more than usually likeable as Johnny: he has an impressive emotional transparency in the early scenes and keeps tenaciously in character as the camera stays on him but his lines dry up. (It’s one of those occasions when you’re not sure whether it’s the character or the actor you keep rooting for.)
As usual, Reed’s handling of children in the cast is impeccable and the physical casting of them is very fine. There’s an extraordinary sequence in which we see the faces of a gang of street kids and they seem like embryo old men, and to suggest predetermined lives. The film is photographed by Robert Krasker – a year before his more celebrated work for Reed on The Third Man but the lighting here is often remarkable too: it’s used to illumine ordinary locations like a corner shop, places which appear (especially retrospectively) to reassuring effect in many British films of the time. The dignified score, with tragic notes, is by William Alwyn.
6 September 2006