Odd Man Out (1947) - film review

Johnny McQueen hides out in an anonymous Belfast house, having recently broken out of prison where he was serving a stretch for involvement with a terrorist organisation.  To raise money for their cause, Johnny and his fellow conspirators decide to mount a robbery on a mill.  Despite the pleas of his girlfriend Kathleen, Johnny insists on leading the hold-up, even though his health isn’t up to it.  The robbery goes exactly as planned, until the gunmen try to make their getaway.  Johnny stumbles and is apprehended by one of the mill’s employees.  Having shot his assailant with his own gun, Johnny attempts to climb into the getaway car but falls off.  In a daze, he staggers away, weakened by the bullet wound he sustained in his escape.   With the police and his friends frantically scouring Belfast for him, Johnny wanders through the back streets of the city in a delirious stupor.  Some of the people he encounters show him kindness, some are indifferent, but most appear to be more interested in the reward money offered for his capture.  Realising the ultimate fate that awaits Johnny when he is caught, Kathleen sets out to find him, having resolved that nothing will separate them...

The first of Carol Reed’s unfaltering masterpieces is this extraordinarily intense and poignant film noir drama which both presaged the director’s other great works – notably The Third Man (1949) – and provided the inspiration for many subsequent British noir thrillers.  The lukewarm reception the film received on its release probably had more to do with its sympathetic portrayal of an IRA terrorist than its obvious artistic merits.  Today few would deny that Odd Man Out is one of Reed’s great triumphs, and also a high point of 1940s British cinema.

What is most striking about the film is its arresting visual presentation.  Reed and his cinematographer Robert Krasker transform the everyday reality of an ordinary town into the bleakest noir labyrinth of the mind, with stark shadows and high contrast lighting which, as in the German expressionist films of the 1920s, create a harrowing sense of confinement and impending doom.  With its unremittingly bleak fatalism,  the film is evocative of both American film noir and French poetic realism, but with a heightened sense of reality.  The characters in the drama are not the familiar noir stereotypes, but real people with real failings, all trying to survive as best they can in an austere and totally unforgiving world.  It is the juxtaposition of the subtly stylised setting and the startlingly realistic characters which makes this film so memorable and effective.  

Complementing Reed’s inspired direction, Krasker’s stunning cinematography and a faultless screenplay are a collection of superb character performances from some of Britain’s finest actors of the period.  As the hunted fugitive, James Mason turns in one of the most creditable performances of his career, and we can only sympathise with his character as his life drains away whilst others try to capitalise on his misfortune, like vultures circling above a stricken antelope.  There’s an equally memorable turn from another icon of British cinema, Robert Newton, who is utterly sinister as a grotesque artist obsessed with capturing the soul of a dying man.   F.J. McCormick comes close to stealing the film as the bird-loving vagabond who has a crisis of conscience over what to do with Johnny, and there are some equally respectable contributions from such talented performers as Cyril Cusack, Kathleen Ryan, William Hartnell and Fay Compton.

Odd Man Out is more than just a compelling piece of cinema.  It is also a powerful morality play that deals with the essential themes of human experience – duty and betrayal, the limits of free will, the conflict between self-interest and compassion for others, the triumph of love and faith over adversity.  It may not be quite as stylistically brilliant as The Third Man, which deals with similar themes, but it is more depressingly astute in its assessment of human nature.  The experience of war and its immediate aftermath would continue to cast a long shadow over British society for many years.  From this shadow would emerge such great works of cinema as this, recording for posterity the scars and traumas of a generation that had seen Hell.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?